Lease Renewal Process – Explained

To help us get started with the lease renewal process let’s first define lease. A lease is a binding contract between you and the tenant, stating the terms of the agreement.

Leases will expire anywhere between June and September in the Greater Boston area. We do this because that’s the highest amount of demand. If the tenant is asking you, or perhaps you’re in a situation where you have a December vacancy, have that lease go all the way until the end of June or September. The duration is anywhere between 12 months or a little bit shorter or longer to try to get you into that time frame.

The Process

If we have our leases end anywhere between June to September, we start our Lease Renewal Process up to 9 months in advance. During December or January, we’re going to start looking at the market. We will start trying to see what the pricing looks like in the market.

A lot of the bigger landlords will get their units out that early. We will be able to use that as a reference. Sometimes, we look at the market, in general, to see how many vacancies there might be and see how easy it was to rent last year. We will then make recommendations to the landlord on what type of increases we should be able to provide or to be able to offer to the tenants. It also depends on the unit by unit. You want to see what your unit looks like in comparison to the market condition.

If there’s a lot of room, you might have been under-marketed before. We use that as a guide to be able to make the rent a little bit higher.

We’re also going to do our annual walkthroughs. We want to see how the tenants are treating the property and if they are keeping it in a good condition. In case they are not taking care of the property correctly, we’re going to speak to the residents. We’re going to make sure that issues are corrected.

When we send the Lease Renewal Form, it will state that they will continue for another time frame – usually for another 12 months.

So imagine that our September 1st tenants will renew in January for another 12 months. Once they sign it, you more or less get them for 21 months because you’re doing it nine months in advance plus the renewed term of 12 months.

This allows us to be able to be proactive with marketing to make sure that you have a ZERO chance of vacancy.

Conclusion

To wrap things up, lease renewal is a process in which you are going to talk with the residents and give them a Lease renewal form to try to get them to extend for another time frame.

If they do not signify that renewal, you’ll be able to put that on the market in advance. We’re going to try to rent it out again. Next September, which is nine months in advance, you already have another tenant lined up.

Those are some of the ways that Green Ocean Property Management handles lease renewals. We want to make sure that we minimize both headaches and eliminate vacancies.

So remember with Green Ocean Property Management where you get more than a property manager, you get peace of mind.