How to Recover From the Tenants’ Negative Reviews
The Internet Era has revolutionized pretty much every industry, and the real estate world has not been spared. Do you know how to recover from tenants’ negative reviews? A few years ago, you didn’t need to do much to your apartments to have potential tenants trooping in. A ‘RENTALS AVAILABLE’ sign was enough to draw interest. However, in recent years, this has changed. Therefore, tenants who are looking for rental houses tend to trust sites like Yelp or Facebook to establish how good your rental space is. This will help them know whether they’ll come to check the place out or not.
However, this is bad news if your apartments have bad reviews or ratings on online platforms. Their appeal could suddenly take a nosedive. What’s even worse is that the negative review may be as a result of miscommunication. The Good news is that with a dose of patience, you can recover from negative reviews and here’s how:
- Don’t Take the Reviews to Heart
The worst response to negative reviews would be to take them personally. There’s the allure of hitting the online platforms to defend what you have grown all this long with scathing remarks. However, this is in no way productive, and it won’t help improve the reviews. So once you catch wind of these negative reviews, try and view them objectively. Come up with a list of the complaints made in the views. Afterward, identify the complaints that you can look into and filter out those that are not legitimate. This beats taking them personally.
- Respond to the Complainants
The least you can do is to respond to the negative reviews. This means you have to reach out to the persons in question and even apologize where needed. When you don’t respond to the negative responses, you may signal that you have no interest in talking or improving to potential tenants. Also, you could go to the extent of giving specific answers to complaints raised and even promise to follow up. Afterward, you can follow up with the concerned parties outside the online forum.
- Meet the Reviewers
If possible, meet in person with the reviewers to hear their concerns. It’s no surprise that people may hit the internet to make their complaints known when the same concerns could be dealt with when discussed with the right people. For this reason, if the review was from a tenant, meet with them and hear their concerns. Afterward, try to resolve their issue. Once the issue is dealt with, you can request them to update their review.
- Make Changes
If the reviews touch on the same issue, it’s a no-brainer that you have to implement some change. It could mean that you have to change the protocol, improve on communication with your tenants by talking to your staff or even making renovations. Doing this will help you avoid negative reviews in the future, and you will have improved your way into getting better reviews.
- Request for Positive Reviews
Just because there was a dissatisfied tenant doesn’t mean that all tenants were unhappy with your accommodation space. There’s bound to be a satisfied tenant. When possible, reach out to such tenants and encourage them to leave a review online. This, in turn, will help counter the poor reviews that you may have collected and even help boost your online rating.
Moreover, no owner of rental property likes getting negative reviews. However, putting into place a plan of action will help avoid negative reviews defining your property in the future. In fact, with a little nudge in the right direction, you could boost your reputation, and this will help lower your vacancy rate and ensure that your rent stays up.
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