Mark Roemer Image of Wi-Fi router.

Ways to Cut Internet Costs for Your Rental Property

As more and more landlords are looking for ways to retain tenants, I, Mark Roemer know many of them have switched to providing them with the internet. This can be a significant selling point in many markets across the country. However, it is not enough to provide them with the internet. It must be a decent internet connection. There are far too many choices for rental properties with internet access. Supplying your tenants with a subpar internet connection will have them looking elsewhere.

That being said, you do need to make sure they can use what you are providing them. There is no reason to give the best internet in the world if they are only going to use 2% of the bandwidth. I will discuss this later. For now, know that you are going to have to do some work to sort out what you provide them at the lowest possible price.

Cutting the cost of a service you provide is not you being cheap. It merely is maximizing the service you offer them at the lowest price possible. The reason is that you must figure out the cost of the internet into the price of the lease agreement.

At this point, I am going to dive right in and share with you the ways to cut the cost of the internet you provide to your tenants. Read on if I have piqued your interest.

Review Your Plan

When you understand your internet plan, you will be better suited to know what you are paying for. Take the time to look over your bill and what exactly you are being billed for. Doing this will help you to avoid overpaying for services you don’t use or need. Just remember not to cut back too much, or you will run the risk of having slow internet. As I said before, this is going to lead to tenants finding another place to live.

Additionally, you can ask your tenants how much they use the internet and for what activities. Just be sure to remind them this is entirely voluntary. The only reason you are asking them is to provide them with the best service possible. Don’t pry too much into their personal life. Just find out the basics. Take, for instance; you have a tenant that only uses the internet for emails. Then you have another that does not have cable service and uses their internet to stream videos. They require two different amounts of data. To make everyone happy, you are going to need to plan for the person with the highest usage. While the others may not use that much, you must satisfy all your tenants equally. It would not be fair to cut back the internet because one person uses more.

Invest in a Router

You can have all the speed in the world, but if you have a cheap router, it will be for nothing. The reason is that the internet will bottleneck on your router. It is easy to think of it in terms of water pipes. If you have a vast water supply coming into your house and then have a tiny pipe on the taps, you will not be able to use the water being supplied. There will be a backup of water at the smaller pipe.

Visit your local tech store and talk to them about what you have and what they think you will need. Just don’t pay for the biggest and best. Much the same that too cheap of a router will hinder the internet, an expensive one will do you no good. Going back to the pipe example, you will not be able to fill the pipe if the situation were reversed. That is if you have a small pipe, you will not be able to provide any more water pressure to a larger pipe.

Bundles

Since you already are providing your tenants with the internet, perhaps it is worth considering providing them with television and phone as well. May of the internet providers that exist has bundled plans that save you money. Meaning, you will be able to buy phone, internet, and television for the same or comparable price of just internet service. It will also allow you to have fewer workers on the property. As you know, when workers are on the property, you have a chance of them damaging something. This way, you will be in control of who comes on the property and when.

If these services are of no interest to you, then make sure you provide your tenants with a step-by-step instruction sheet letting them know how to connect their streaming services to the Wi-Fi. Remind them to remove their saved accounts when they move out.

Security

Since most landlords don’t know much about routers and internet systems, they often leave the Wi-Fi connection open. This is a big mistake. This will allow anyone that is driving by or living in the area to use the internet. This will degrade the internet service that your tenants are paying for.

Additionally, leaving a router open has the potential of having your tenants’ personal information stolen. If the right person comes along, they will be able to hack into your router and steal sensitive information from those living in your rental property. It is best if you protect both you and your clients in this situation and lock that router down. It isn’t as hard to deal with as you think. On a side note, you may want to consider changing the password every year to prevent old tenants from sharing that information on the internet.

Wi-Fi Channel

This tip will not so much save you money on the internet directly but in the cost of recycling tenants. If you have done all of the above steps and your tenants still have a reduced connection speed, you will want to make one additional change. As many routers are programmed to broadcast on the same channel, the system can get a little jammed up. Run a network analyzer (free on the internet) and find out how many other routers are on the same channel in your area. Should you find a lot of routers on the channel, make a switch to a less crowded channel.

Closing Thoughts

In today’s fiercely competitive market, you are going to want to make yourself stand out. Mark Roemer knows that one of the best ways to do this is to provide your tenants with a valuable service. Take the time to make the adjustments I have laid out above, and you will find you have much happier clients.