Landlording can be a tough business. Your income often depends on factors beyond your control: the economy leads to job losses; job losses and overbuilding lead to vacancies; vacancies lead to a renter’s market. Coupled with the day-to-day hassles of keeping your properties in shape, handling tenant problems, and making the numbers work, the stress can make even a saintly person cranky at times.

Cranky landlords don’t necessarily make the best landlords. Most landlords want to be known as a “good landlord,” which could be broadly defined as enjoying mutually-beneficial and respectful relationships with long-term tenants, making a profit and enjoying the rental business. These are not unachievable goals.

Good landlords know that income property investing is not about the buildings. They know their income from those properties depends on the people inside them. Good landlords know they are in the people business. Outstanding customer service and communication skills are absolutely necessary to be a good landlord.

Tenants might say the characteristic common to good landlords is empathy—the ability to understand another’s situation, feelings, or emotions; to walk a mile in that person’s shoes.

Tenants are people and want to be treated just like you want to be treated. Sure, they make mistakes. Sure, you’ve heard the horror stories from other landlords about skipped rents, trashed apartments, neglect, and bad behavior. These things happen to the nicest of landlords. But they don’t happen as much to good landlords who treat their business like a business, their tenants like people, and who set high standards for their properties, their tenants, and their own behavior.

Good landlords:

 are fair

 know who they are renting to before the lease is signed (thorough tenant pre-screening)

 make repairs when they are needed

 wouldn’t rent anyone a property they wouldn’t let their mother live in

 set firm rules

 respect their tenants enough to not treat them like children—or animals

 do not take advantage of their tenants

 are not self-serving

 recognize the landlord/tenant relationship as a mutually-beneficial business partnership that requires effort on both sides

It doesn’t take a superhero to make a living in the rental property business. Lots of folks do—and some manage to be “good landlords,” too!