How to avoid a high tenant turnover

Property blogger Lea Beven, of Limecastle, looks at ways of keeping your tenants happy in a house-share and how to stop them getting fed-up and leaving:

It's all coming out of the woodwork this week. No, not the woodworm – houses of multiple occupations (HMO's)!

I have seen a massive rise in articles written about shared houses and HMO's, which is lovely, as this means that people are learning more about how to set them up and increasing the volume of rooms on the books in high demand areas.

I love it, but there are some vital bits of information missing - the bit that explain how to keep your tenants in the property. Take heed and learn!

Did you know that the biggest turnover of tenants in house shares is in the properties that the landlords DON'T attend frequently enough to nip niggles in the bud.

Let's say John lives in room one, right by the front door, is very messy and leaves his door open all the time.

When you come in and when you bring guests in, the first thing they see is this room. It can drive other tenants out of the property as they feel embarrassed to live there.

Dave however, well he leaves his piles of washing up on the side for a week and just adds to it, until eventually one of the other tenants who needs a plate has to tackle it!

This causes pent-up frustration every single time one of the tenants walks into the kitchen and eventually someone will explode and walk out.

Sarah does her washing on a Friday and hangs it on her clothes horse that she can't fit in her room because of all of her shoes (ok, now I'm pushing it...).

It ends up in the lounge and blocks access to the dining table. This makes the property look like a laundrette and makes using the facilities quite difficult.

The general gist of this is that you can do everything right - furnish a property well, have a great location, offer the right facilities – BUT, if you don't keep on top of the day-to-day use of the property, you can end up with a high tenant turnover.

So come on landlords, look after your tenants!

My tip of the week - For good cash flow, keep good house rules!