Building a real estate investment empire isn’t about owning the most properties, charging the highest rates, or investing in the most luxurious markets. Success as an SFR investor comes through a high level of service and consistency. Your greatest asset apart from your properties is the people inhabiting them.

You can pick a new investment property that seems absolutely perfect in your mind. But is it really? Are you keeping your tenants top-of-mind when you purchase and when you decide to renovate?  It is easy to lose site of THE single most important factor when real estate investing in long-term buy and hold properties.  Tenant satisfaction leads to longer occupancy.

For real estate investors, tenant retention is one of the key elements to investment success. The longer you can keep good tenants around and fill any vacancies, the better your passive income will be.  At Premier Property Management Group, the property management firm owned by the Clothier family and providing management service to Memphis Invest, the average length of occupancy per property across the $350 Million portfolio under management is just over four years.

While historically renting has been seen as a less-desirable alternative to home ownership, that perception has been gradually shifting, both in the U.S. and abroad. A 2012 study by Property Intelligence in the UK found that 60% of renters said that they were not reluctant renters. And the 40% that are reluctant are mostly frustrated would-be buyers than anything.

Even across pond, many of the same sentiments translate over here in the United States.

So when you’re thinking about your next purchase or considering renovations, keep in mind what tenants really want out of their rental homes.

Let's face it: You probably don't have a monopoly on all the rental homes in your area. (If you do, please be kind enough to let us know where you live, so we can take some of that market share off your hands; you must be exhausted.) With so many other real estate investors competing for a limited pool of tenants, it's important to make yourself stand out from the crowd.  Here in Memphis we are managing right over 1,800 properties and, while that may seem like a massive number of properties, we are still a fraction of the total number of rental properties in the city.  Just this week, we have had several meetings to discuss stepping away from the "ordinary" and figuring out how to eliminate altogether properties that are vacant over 30 days.  We have roughly 25 properties in our entire portfolio about 1.3% that have been vacant over 30 days and we have been asking ourselves the same question we posed to you above.