Why You Need A Tenant Journal

90% of the time you’ll never have problems with a tenant, but for that 10%, keeping a tenant journal pays off huge!

So what’s exactly a tenant journal?

Well some landlords keep a notebook for each property and each interaction with a tenant.

Some simply write notes in their favourite note writing apps or on a piece of paper after every interaction with the tenants or regarding the property and put it in their property folder in their files.

For me, I simply kept a journal where I recorded everything. This was not just restricted to tenant conversations or interactions, but calls for viewings for properties, contractor interactions, virtually everything that was going on during my day.

Over the years I have amassed drawers full of them. Sometimes they would last three months, slower times six months, but they would be chock full of everything I may need to reference later.

What Do You Need To Include in A Tenant Journal?

So what did I include? I referenced recording everything, but the important part is to also include the dates. and property addresses or nicknames you may have.

I used my journal as todo lists as well, so I’d write the date on the days page everyday.

This allowed me to cross reference dates and often times where I’d include them to what tenants may bring up.

Tenant complains I never deal with furnace issues? Wants to use this to potentially break the lease?

Well let’s look in my journal, they called February 20th, I had a furnace inspection done on the 23rd at 10am. I reference further back to just before they moved in nine months prior and as part of the property cleanup my duct cleaning company had been there cleaning ducts and inspecting the furnace at nine in the morning.

I not only have a paper trial of when these events occurred, I know exactly who to contact to prove this and I now know the tenant may have had other reasons for wanting to get out of the lease.

By simply documenting all this information I have a huge resource of information to back up complaints, to remind me of task I’ve done on a property.

Once I finished a book, I’d write the end date and start dates on the front cover so I knew what time periods they cover.

It Became My Catch All

My journal held everything I needed. It had all my phone numbers of people who’d called, tenant interactions, contractor names and numbers along with where they’d worked and over the years they become a huge repository of handy reference information.

Can’t remember who did the roof on a property. Narrow down when it happened, find the appropriate notebook/journal and voila, now I know it was Steve of Steve’s Epic Roofing and I have his contact number.

Granted I try to store everyone’s name, company and contact info in my smart phone, but you need to know their name, or their company and that escapes you over time. That’s why the journal systems has been so handy.

The Busier You Are, The Handier It becomes

Sure taking the time to write down everything can be exhausting, but the payback and ability to look back later made it invaluable.

The busier I was the easier it becomes to forget something or someone. With my journals I could simply go back and update myself.

So whether you call it a journal, a diary, a day timer or just a notebook, the more you have to do, the more important it becomes.

Anyone else doing something similar?