How often do you change rates for current units?

Sue_C

For current tenants, do you raise their rates after a certain amount of time? Or maybe you give them a discount for being long-term clients. What seems to work for you?

JOYCE

A customer overpaid at call center with a credit card. How do I correct this?

Orkocean

On average customers should get yearly increases at the least to keep them in the habit of expecting it. The closure you are to capacity the more often you should be sending increases.

@Joyce - You need to create a new post as your question could of got lost in the mix since it's tagged to a different topic. If it's same day and someone at your company who has access goes in to sitelink to delete the receipt before the daily close is done you should be good. If it was on a previous date or the daily close was already done they would need to log into the merchant service provider you use to reverse the transaction which depending on banks and all could take 5-10 business days on average.

Sue_C

@JOYCE, I've created a new post with your question here: 
https://storageforum.sitelink.com/discussion/1193/a-customer-overpaid-at-call-center-with-a-credit-card-how-do-i-correct-this#latest

@Orkocean, thanks for mentioning this may get lost. I'm going to add your answer into the repost comments.

Matt_Rogers

I have no problem reversing the payment or crediting in Sitelink (virtual terminal if necessary).
Rather than waiting for the CC to be credited I have suggested...can we put it towards the next months rent? They often agree and keeps the money in house. Of course it depends on the customer and who's fault it was.

ThriftyStorage

We increase monthly rates on all tenants once a year. Another thing that I do here is as units become vacant I raise the monthly rate $10 to $15 dollars.

skinman

We look at rates yearly for existing tenants. If they are receiving a 10% discount or more in comparison to current street rates, they get an increase.  

khise

We do rate increases on an individual basis, taking into account the current street rate as opposed to the current rental rate each tenant is paying and how long they have been here. If a tenant rented during a "special," we will let that tenant know at lease sighing that the discounted rate is only good for a certain amount of time and after that, the rate will increase to the normal rate. Of course, we still have to send out rent increase notices to those tenants as well.  Also, I think rate management is unique to each location. You may be in a location where you have little competition and are able to raise rents a little more liberally than someone who is in a heavily competed area. Doing a comp survey before rent increases is a helpful way to learn whether your increases will keep you competitive or take you out of the competition. 

teamcapitola

We do our rent increases once a year on the tenants anniversary month. We target 6%, but over the past 2 years our (and our entire area's) "street" rates have increased 12% each year, seriously outpacing our modest 6% increase. Even with our increases being on the low end, (and telling new tenants about our yearly increase), we still get the "but I'm a great customer & you are punishing me!" attitude every time.

A big mistake during our lease up years was NOT doing regular rate increases; the owners didn't want to start increasing until our occupancy stabilized. We were faced with a huge group of tenants who never had an increase, and were paying very low (relative) rates. Lots of upset tenants, but very few left because of an increase.

CVSSSTORAGE

jeanrodrigous333 said:

What about storing for a short period?

you aren't going to be raising the rent on someone who's only going to be there a couple months. We do it once a year if they are not at the current new rates for their size unit