DRAMA VS BUSINESS
Can the two be separated? What’s your opinion? And what if it’s a real estate business? Now can the drama be removed from the business?
We think … um … not!
We’ll consider this from the customer angle: our tenants. This is their home. There are typically just a few emotions connected with our homes, right? Nope, it doesn’t matter that they don’t own it (from the tenants’ perspective). They’re paying rent every month, so in their heart of hearts, its theirs. Now let’s add in the money=rent. There’s only a few emotions/beliefs/thoughts about money, right?
Now, we’ll add a little inflammatory media spin=designed to make headlines, get attention, create sympathy from a certain “angle.” And that’s what happened recently in a CBC news story: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/renters-sin-drivers-licence-sensitive-information-landlords-1.6808405.
There are 2 sides to this story, just sayin’. Any landlord who’s had a difficult or destructive or non-paying tenant can probably tell you a horror story (interesting that CBC didn’t print any of that). So should landlords skip some of the due diligence when they’re offering their $400,000 asset to a person or family to live in, for a year or more? Apparently today is a day for rhetorical questions from us!
Most landlords value client privacy. But just like a few bad tenants can create a bad tenant reputation, a few bad landlords create an unfortunate image for the rest of us. Cue the drama, stage left!
There has been ample debate about this article and the accompanying video, so we don’t feel the need to re-hash it here. Everyone will have their opinions, thoughts, values, etc….
But as a real estate investor, this is a business. A tenant with a bad credit score is a real risk to our business. A tenant who lies on their application is quite likely to lie about something else. And Tenant Tom, who refuses to provide previous landlord references “because they were all greedy, evil capitalists,” is probably hiding something he doesn’t want his new landlord to know.
Are we changing any of our practices because of this article? Because of privacy fears? Because of the “image” of the landlord in the media? Nope. It’s not personal. It’s just business. In comparison, when a client buys a pair of shoes, they need to pay for it at the counter. The store takes their credit card information. To protect their inventory, most stores now have security sensors at the exits. Shoplifters are maybe 1% of customers at our example store, but EVERY customer goes through the same process to exit the store: past the security sensors. It’s just business. Most customers have nothing to hide, so they continue on with their shopping journey. Most stores use the credit card information once, for a transaction, and no privacy is breached, no personal identity is stolen.
What’s our point? Don’t let the drama interrupt your business systems. Collect the necessary information. Confirm identity. Destroy any documents that could be used for identity theft as soon as possible. But don’t cut corners or skip steps in the assessment of a potential customer. No one else apologizes for running a credit/debit card at a store, to make sure the buyer can pay for those shoes.
As a landlord that cares about providing service to our clientele = our tenants, we make every attempt to attract tenants who value that service. It’s not a joke, a scam or a dictatorship—it’s just a business arrangement and relationship.
Drama may now exit, stage right!
