Do your tenants have ‘great expectations’?

As consumers, we all have high expectations when it comes to customer service. And that also goes for tenants living in rented properties, which could be why we’re increasingly finding that tenants’ expectations are unrealistic. We’re seeing more and more tenants unwilling (or unable) to carry out routine repairs and maintenance and instead seem to expect the services of a repairman to be included as ‘part of the service’ from their landlord. Maybe tenants feel this should be covered in their rental payment. Or maybe they are simply unable to do these jobs themselves, lacking the DIY skills that dads used to teach their children as a matter of course.

Whatever, the reason, over the last ten years the number of calls received by our property management department has gone up noticeably and, we have had all sorts of requests. We’ve been asked to bleed a radiator, change a battery in a smoke alarm and tighten the hinge on a door handle. On more than one occasion a tenant has asked us how to replace a lightbulb and we were even requested to come out to wipe the condensation from a tenant’s windows.

Maybe some tenants really don’t know how to carry out these tasks for themselves. Or maybe they’re scared to – one tenant recently called us to say that their lights had gone off. We told him that he needed to reset the consumer unit by flicking the switch as something had tripped, but he refused to do this, claiming that he was scared of being electrocuted. This is perhaps understandable with students who have just left home but thirty-something professionals perhaps ought to know better.

Sometimes it’s down to the tenants’ perception of what a ‘rented’ property is.
So what could be causing this shift in expectations? Perhaps it’s because many of us stay regularly in hotels and serviced accommodation that tenants consider rental accommodation to be an extension of this. In particular, tenants who live in higher end properties and have the services of a concierge, a gym and other facilities may think that ‘handyman’ services are all included in the rent. They’re not! One tenant even told one of our property managers that he rents deliberately so that he doesn’t have to deal with maintenance.

But there are times when we really do wonder ourselves. One tenant kept phoning complaining that his new TV had not arrived. We phoned the delivery company who had tried to deliver it three times. When we asked the tenant if the doorbell had been ringing over the past few days he said that it had – but he hadn’t answered it as he wasn’t expecting anyone.

Another tenant complained that he had no hot water in the shower. It turned out that he hadn’t turned the control from ‘cold’ to ‘hot’. And one man complained that his sink had been blocked for several days. We eventually discovered that he’d left the plug in – these sound like jokes but they are real occurances!

Whatever the reason, it seems that many tenants are unwilling or unable to carry out simple maintenance tasks that just a few years ago they would have tackled automatically. Whether it’s dads failing to pass on DIY skills or tenants simply expecting too much from a rented property, we’re not really sure, but if you’re a landlord without much time, you could consider choosing a property management agent to look after your property. Most of our landlords are not aware that we ‘parent’ their tenants.