Law IN ORDER
WHY CAN’T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG? CONFLICT MANAGEMENT AND RESOLUTION WITH TENANTS
Hari Nathan Kalyan,
Warren Kalyan & Mattocks
Allison “Allie” Mattocks, Warren Kalyan & Mattocks
Mari Garza,
Warren Kalyan & Mattocks
52 / W I N D O W O N R E N T A L H O U S I N G
C
onflict is everywhere. Just watch the daily news or scroll through your social media feed, and you’ll find disagreements and disputes all around you. As a result, knowing how to effectively address conflict is an indispensable skill. Everyone has different communication styles and conflict management approaches, and it’s common for one to default to what is comfortable. But not every conflict requires the same response. Effective conflict management and resolution can help you navigate your next dispute. Doing so has many benefits. You can reduce the negative impact conflict can have on your mental health and that of those around you. You can also reduce the time you spend cleaning up a mess that has spun out of control by constructively addressing the conflict when it first arises. Proper conflict management can also promote trust among the participants. The best way to resolve conflict between the property and tenant is to prevent it all together. Even the most ironclad lease agreement and preemptive measures cannot entirely prevent misunderstandings and disagreements, but they certainly can help. The lease agreement is a legally binding contract, and a court is likely to rely heavily on the provisions of the lease agreement in resolving a dispute. That is why it’s essential to review the written lease agreement and community policies and utilize these documents as support for your position in a dispute. You’ll rarely hear tenants of multifamily properties make statements such as, “I didn’t know doing [insert prohibited conduct here] was against the rules. Thank you for explaining this to me.” Regrettably,
pointing to lease paragraphs that the tenant violated may do little to assist the tenant in seeing things from management’s perspective. After all, the tenant did not negotiate any of the provisions of the lease they signed; they simply agreed to all of the provisions in exchange for housing. Instead, we urge you to provide a written explanation of such rules in order to memorialize delivery of the message to the tenant, confirm receipt by the tenant, and to repeat this process consistently. This type of lease discussion with a tenant may be the first of many steps taken toward gaining a tenant’s compliance or addressing their dissatisfaction. Each step must be properly and thoroughly documented internally using your tenant-management software system and externally by memorializing your discussion in writing by email or some other manner to the tenant. Too often, we encounter situations where management’s prior efforts to resolve disputes are lost because of personnel changes within the company. When a manager is terminated or moves on from the property, their firsthand knowledge leaves with them. To avoid this, make sure each member of your management team documents their dispute resolution efforts in a record made at or near the time of the event or reasonably soon thereafter. Taking the time to memorialize the discussion in a written communication, lease violation, notation, or memorandum will cause that discussion to become part of the landlord’s business records. Under the Texas Rules of Evidence, Rule 803(6), these business records can be brought into a lawsuit without the need for testimony by the manager who originally had the discussion and made the record.
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By Hari Nathan Kalyan (Partner), Allison Mattocks (Partner) and Mari Garza (Counsel)
