A few weeks ago, I had a conversation with a friend of mine. She rents an apartment in a large complex. She mentioned that she’s planning on moving out at the end of her lease term.
I asked her why she wanted to leave, and she named several minor problems with her apartment.
She felt the dishwasher was a little bit too old and loud. The sliding door around her balcony leaked a little bit of air and needed new weather-stripping.
As a landlord, none of these seemed like major issues to me. If I had a tenant who requested more weather-stripping, I’d happily give them some. After all, it’s an incredibly reasonable request.
I’ve been to her apartment and I can vouch that her dishwasher is truly old. It’s definitely on the verge of needing to be replaced. And her sliding doors probably do need weatherstripping. In other words, she isn’t asking for anything unreasonable.
An Unreasonable Request?
I asked my friend if she has mentioned any of these issues to her landlord. She hadn’t, she said, because she felt that none of these were the types of issues that she should ask her landlord to fix.
The dishwasher is loud, but it’s not broken. The doors leak some cold air, but she didn’t feel she could ask to have it fixed.
Instead, she just stayed silent and allowed these minor issues to wear on her, little by little, until it finally caused her to decide to move out.
Understanding Why Tenants Leave
After this conversation, I started to get a better idea of what causes tenant turnover. Sometimes it’s the small issues within our units that cause tenants to leave.
These are the types of issues that …read more