How to Collect Rent From Tenants During and After the COVID-19/ Coronavirus, When You Don’t Have a Fayetteville Property Manager or Property Management Company

Landlords across Fayetteville are at a loss as to how to collect rent during and after the COVID-19/Coronavirus pandemic we current face in North Carolina, across the United States, and across the world. Collecting rent during the Coronavirus presents a number of challenges for landlords and property owners.

These challenges, to a certain extent, should have been anticipated and addressed prior to the economic impact we are seeing. Although property management companies in Fayetteville could not necessarily have anticipated tenants being unable to pay their rent on this scale, contingency plans should have been implemented long before, based on possible and likely economic scenarios which could impact a landlord’s ability to collect rent.

The economic impact created by the coronavirus, most certainly, is reminiscent of an economic recession or depression. The coronavirus, is merely a trigger mechanism, and a contingency plan focusing on mitigating a landlord’s financial loss should always be in place, regardless of the triggering mechanism.

For landlords in Fayetteville that are represented by property management companies, a detailed plan of action should have been given to landlords, explaining how exactly the property management company planned on ensuring that the landlord would still be able to collect rental income, and thus be able to pay their mortgage.

Additionally, property management companies in Fayetteville should provide landlords with a way ahead as to the foreseen economic impact; how the economic factors would impact the landlord’s ability to collect rents; and a reasonable course of action for the landlord, including sale of the landlord’s property being managed, in the event the landlord was unable to meet their financial responsibilities.  

No more apparent than now, it is evident that most property management companies in Fayetteville have failed, to a great extent, to protect landlords, and also to protect tenants. While the property management company’s duty is to protect the landlord’s investment, implicit in this duty is the property management company’s duty to ensure that the tenant is also satisfied. A satisfied tenant equates to a tenant that stays longer, thus, providing the landlord with a steady reliable rental income stream. In other words, any prooffered plan must consider both the landlord and tenant.  Both are stakeholders in the landlord’s success. 

To this end, we have developed a guide to assist landlords in Fayetteville with collecting rent during and after the COVID-19 Coronavirus. This guide was created by the Linchpin Property Management executive staff, is the capstone of  over 35 years of legal and real estate experience, and was created with the purpose of assisting individual landlords in recovering, and mitigating, economic losses occurring as a result of the current pandemic.

The landlord in Fayetteville, North Carolina will be able to use this guide to:

• develop a modified rental payment structure that doesn’t alleviate obligations under the lease;

• develop a mechanism to keep constant lines of communication open with the tenant;

• allow the tenant to regain a feeling of self-worth during this process;

• prepare for an eviction proceeding if one becomes necessary; and

• increase tenant retention after the coronavirus, by way of coming to a mutually agreeable compromise.

While we know this may be a band aid to an otherwise large wound, assisting landlords in mitigating any financial loss suffered by the coronavirus, through collecting rent during and after, is our primary concern. As you will read in the guide, we view each landlord as a small business, and what we will find is that after the full weight of this pandemic has run its course in Fayetteville, there will be many landlords/small businesses that will fail. Large businesses will survive, but it is incumbent upon us all to assist, as much as possible, the landlord/small business owner.

This guide was made with our Fayetteville property management clients, and you the individual Fayetteville property landlord in mind. While the guide is not a complete reflection of all of the means and methods available to you, we hope that it will put you on the path towards recovering some of your financial loses.

As always, if you have any questions or need help figuring out how to use the guide for your property management, please feel free to contact us. We are here to help.

The Team at Linchpin Property Management.