HUNTER’S HINTS By Hunter Boucher, Director of Operations, LandlordBC article was on handling repair requests, the approach is the same. Ensure you have a simple way for tenants to communicate, acknowledge the complaint, communicate next steps, and follow up. This can be applied to any issue that may arise in a tenancy, including noise complaints. The difficulty you face when receiving noise complaints is how to do you resolve the complaint? To simplify, it’s easier to look at this as a series of steps. Step one is investigation; you need to interrogate the situation and determine for yourself what is occurring. If a tenant makes a complaint that their neighbour is blasting music at all hours, reach out to other tenants and determine if the noise is truly unreasonable. Get any complaints in writing and ask for permission to use it in future proceedings. It is important to not make a situation worse by acting without verifying the complaint.
You do not need to wait for a tenant to make a complaint to start the process of addressing an issue. I once had a dental hygienist that liked to play loud music while she worked, as she put it, “if you can’t listen to it loud it isn’t worth listening to.” I didn’t mind but I can’t speak for the patients in other rooms. I doubt she received any complaints but then again, it’s generally not good practice to complain to a person holding a drill to your tooth. How does this apply to your rental housing business? Simply put, as a landlord a critical aspect of your job is to ensure your tenants are not unreasonably disturbed by other tenants and occupants of the residential property. This means establishing clear lines of communication with your tenants that encourage open and constructive feedback, following up on this feedback, and when possible be proactive to a situation that could escalate if not addressed early. In the last issue of The Key I reviewed the basics of setting up a system for tenants to provide constructive feedback. While focus of that
Once you have investigated the complaint, it is time to address it with the problematic tenant, step two. Depending on the severity of the issue this should generally start with a simple conversation. This is your opportunity to resolve the issue without causing you and your tenants any unnecessary grief. If possible, have a meeting with the affected and offending tenants to try to reach an agreement for resolution. If, however, the situation is quite severe, or a conversation does not resolve the issue you may need to serve a Caution Notice to the tenant.
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