Five Impossibly Bad Tenant Renewal Incentives

Although it’s smart to offer good tenants renewal incentives, there are several incentives you should not offer tenants. Choose incentives that highlight your strengths as a landlord, and make the tenant excited for the next year of renting!

• Free maintenance

This should happen year-round, regardless of your tenant’s decision to renew.

In fact, instead of acting as an incentive, maintenance incentives may remind your tenant that you aren’t doing maintenance you are supposed to be doing in the first place.

• Non-rental related PERKS

While everyone loves a good bottle of wine or a set of nice pens, tenants can obtain these kinds of gifts anywhere. Their value does not circle back around to encouraging the tenant to stay.

Find incentives that relate to the rental renewal while making your tenant feel cared for.

• Free month of rent

Giving up a good portion of the income you make on the rental could appear as an act of desperation while simultaneously erasing one-twelfths of your rental income for the year.

Find incentives that won’t affect your bottom line and don’t appear desperate.

• Pest Control

Disgusting! This is a bad incentive in many ways. It implies that you know about a potential pest problem, and haven’t done anything about it! If there is a pest problem, it should be addressed immediately, but it should never be used as a renewal incentive.

Renewal incentives should not include tasks you should already be performing for your tenant, but should be positive perks that go above and beyond.

Pro tip: Have a polite chat with your tenants about avoiding living habits that attract pests! Check out the article How to Tastefully Address Undesirable Tenant Behavior.

• Earplugs, nose plugs, mosquito nets…

…or anything related to a complaint they may have issued.

Trying to convince your tenant to stay by covering their complaints with a band-aid is a no-go!

Originally published at BaseRent.