Essential Tips for Safeguarding Your Rental Property
As a landlord, you need to prioritize your tenants’ safety. This not only helps you attract better tenants but also protects your investment.
While a thorough tenant screening process can help minimize property damage, it doesn’t stop all problems. To prevent significant damage to your rental, follow these recommendations.
1. Install Security Cameras
Landlords want to safeguard their investment while ensuring that tenants respect the property. One way to do this is by installing security cameras. However, there are legal and ethical considerations to keep in mind.
Cameras can be placed outside entry points and other vulnerable areas to deter crime and catch criminal activity. They can also be used to monitor the property when tenants aren’t there. Be sure to notify your tenants beforehand so they are aware of the surveillance.
Ensure that the surrounding areas are well-lit. This will reduce the likelihood of break-ins, especially around windows and doors. Trimming trees and bushes can help as well. It’s a good idea to remove large outdoor decorative items as they can act as hiding spots for intruders.
2. Secure Entry Points
Burglars don’t just knock on your door to politely ask if you’re home, they look for weak points of entry that can be exploited. That’s why it’s essential to bolster security measures around common entry points on rental properties.
These can include doors and windows. Ensure that all doors have sturdy latches and locks. Additionally, consider adding terms to a lease agreement that require tenants to use window security measures such as pin locks or window security film.
Also, make sure the property is well-lit and not overgrown with plants or trees that can provide criminals cover or obscure the view of entry points. This is a great way to reduce the risk of vandalism and other crime on your property. Moreover, it will give your renters peace of mind and make them feel safer in space.
3. Perform Regular Inspections
Even the best tenants can sometimes fall behind on their rent payments, forget to replace a light bulb, allow trash to pile up and become overwhelmed with life. Performing regular property inspections can help you to catch these issues early on, and keep your tenants accountable for maintaining a safe and clean home.
Landlords should include inspection frequency and dates in their lease contracts, and give proper notice before conducting an inspection (which may vary by state law). In addition to ensuring compliance with insurance policies and discovering
maintenance issues, routine inspections are also helpful for resolving disputes with tenants over items that may have been broken or lost.
However, landlords should not enter a tenant’s personal belongings or touch their personal items without permission, which is a violation of privacy.
4. Install Alarms
Keeping tenants happy and safe is a top priority for landlords. The right safety measures can help attract quality tenants and keep them satisfied, even while the property isn’t occupied. In Mississippi, home warranty can be purchased through different companies so be sure to do your own research and find one that fits your needs.
Security measures don’t have to be expensive, but they do need to work. Adding deadbolt locks to doors, windows with high security, and lighting that activates when someone approaches the home can all improve the property’s safety.
These improvements will discourage burglars and trespassers by making it harder to break into the home. And they can also alert the tenants to any problems so that they can call police or security. However, landlords should make sure the cameras aren’t visible and that there isn’t a breach of privacy for their tenants. They can use dummy cameras if they want to ward off intruders without violating tenants’ privacy rights.
5. Hire a Professional
A landlord has many responsibilities, including maintaining property, hiring the right contractors and making sure tenants are following the rules. But there’s one aspect of rental property maintenance that shouldn’t be overlooked: keeping the property safe.
Landlords can hire professional property managers to safeguard their investments by providing a wide range of services. From performing regular inspections and installing alarm systems to running tenant screening services and assessing credit, criminal and eviction history, a professional can save landlords time and money and deter crime.
Vacant homes are vulnerable to vandalism, squatters and other security issues, while landlords often don’t live close enough or have the time to check on their properties regularly. Fortunately, it’s easy to keep your rental home and investment safe by following these essential tips.