How do you handle an aggrieved current resident blatantly telling prospects not to rent at your community?

How do you address or handle it when an aggrieved current resident blatantly tells prospects not to rent at your community and that they’ll hate it there if they move in?

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The property is a luxury A -AA property and the offending residents are still hanging onto grievances from prior management.

You can threaten to sue them on slander. Contact your lawyer.

Business interference is part of our lease

Yes , contact home office and at the end of lease term do a non renewal

We had a similar resident who sat in the lobby and when a leasing agent walked by with a prospect, would trash talk the property.
We had our lawyer send a letter baring the resident from loitering in the lobby as harassing employees who forbidden by the lease.

Proactively ask happy tenants to give you a five star google review, especially after a successful repair or before re-signing a lease. Then point the prospect to your awesome reviews!

Look at possibly using something like Rentgrata to help prospects get connected with other residents who would happily speak about their experience, which sounds like a positive (outside of this one)!

Disrupting business is in the lease, sounds like they need a 30 day

What would it take to appease this aggrieved resident?

Lease violation. You can’t interfere with business. It’s against the lease.

That is nowhere close to interference. Especially if you already have online reviews.

We had that happen with a resident "catching" anyone new and telling them how horrible the staff were. Fortunately, many of the new folks had the common sense to judge for themselves and are perfectly happy. I need to copy many of these responses and send them to the leasing team to non-renew those persons who do this.

That's a lease violation per 4 of the 10 articles listed under prohibited conduct. It's also outlined in the community policies, which the lease states is a direct extension of the lease contract. I had this problem, and risk management recommended I issue lease violations accordingly, leading up to an eviction. I gave them the courtesy of meeting with them before violations were issued and informed them of their rights and penalties to breaking their lease. Offered remedies to their problems and explained the lease violations that will follow, leading up to an eviction and exactly what an eviction means for them. Unfortunately, residents informed me that she moved her protest to her balcony and was effectually evicted. Some people just don't know how to be happy and should probably just buy their own home.

I’d evict them. No telling how much money they’ve cost you.

I had a resident who would blurt out to prospect resident derogatory comments. A had the prospect says to me "Don't mind her. I don't give her any consideration". People can make their decision based on the interaction of our staff.

Give them a lease violation letter and specifically cite the lease - it’s usually under prohibited conduct. Make sure to say that further issues will result in termination of tenancy.

Is there a specific reason why the current resident is upset? Something that can actually be addressed by yourself or your staff? There’s always a few people that are just a Ken/Karen but most have a reason for their behavior.

If you use the NAA lease, there is a clause about not speaking ill of your community and owners or owners representatives.

Not exactly. In Sec 20 (d) NAA lease forbids "disrupting our business operations" and in (j) it forbids "making bad-faith or false allegations against us or our
agents to others." Those two come in very handy when fussy residents want to make things up. But they can speak ill about anything ill.

There is no contract that can legally stop anyone from speaking the truth unless it's an issue of privacy, like a business non-disclosure agreement.

Have the atty write a letter. They are in violation of the lease.

You do not need to pay an attorney--just give them a NTV based on them breaking their agreement. I've never had a resident continue once they realize the stakes of lying about our management.

While I've never seen this happen on the rental side. I can imagine that someone has it in the lease clause. If not, then raise the rent on them by the largest legal amount possible or better off don't renew the lease. This happened only once to me when I was selling a unit. the tenant said a few words to cost me the sale, I explained to the lawyer what happened and he wrote a letter with clear explanation that if it ever happened again they would be subjected to a suit on the grounds of Tortious Interference. which my lawyer explained means someone badmouthing you while you are trying to do your hustle. The person backed off and I did not renew the lease.