When you are working in property management, you will run into tenants who you would think are a picture perfect tenant; they never pay late, they rarely ever call with complaints, and they are just overall good tenants; but just when you think everything is going good, they surprise you by putting in their 30-day notice out of nowhere and you do not really know what you did “wrong” in a sense. Aside from it being very costly for you to turn a property back to move-in ready, these types of situations are very confusing; what even made your tenant leave? Tenants fail to renew their lease for a lot of reasons, but I am going to give a couple of the common reasons tenants do not stay in home they seemed very happy in. One of the main reasons a tenant will leave their home is their personal life might have shifted; maybe they got a new job and it is too far from their home, recently expanded their family, or maybe they are leaving this state to move closer to family and loved ones. There is nothing a landlord/Property Manager can do in this kind of situation, and it usually sneaks up on you with very little warning. Maybe you as the Property manager pay very little attention to detail, sometimes tenants get upset when they are dealing with repairs on the home and you as the property manager do not feel it is very urgent and it can wait over a couple of days, but too a tenant everything in their home is an emergency, rather it is the water heater that just busted, or something more simple like a toilet that is constantly running and hiking up their water bill. To a tenant both of those are very important and they should be looked at the same in their eyes. This brings me to my next point, lack of communication can put a nasty taste in the tenants mouth, when they call/email their property manager they expect a response in 24 hours no matter what the call is about, no news is good news but making the tenant feel like you actually care about them being in the home will keep them in it for a long time. Most of the time, property managers and landlords do not give their tenants a reason to trust them, they do not always feel like it is an open window for communication and they can talk to you about any problems they are having in the home. Tenants like to be treated with transparency, and open honestly. Lastly, sometimes it has absolutely nothing to do with the management of the home, sometimes it is the overall neighborhood, or the people that live in community. Maybe it is an older couple and there is too many kids, or too many dogs in the neighborhood, or maybe they are looking to downsize or even Up-size the living situation. The easiest way to not be blindsided with a 30 day notice is to keep the communication open with your tenants. Make sure they know they can talk to you about any problems with the home, and actually listen to them when they are talking to you.