You might be asking yourself…
Why Create A Welcome Book?
A welcome book not only helps your new tenants get acclimated to their new city, It makes them feel like they have a landlord that genuinely cares. Believe it or not it’s the little details like this that make it easier to raise rents down the road and retain great tenants.
So let’s dive in and take a look at what makes a great welcome book…
Don’t want to create your own welcome book from scratch?
Skip to the end of this article to download our Welcome Book Template!
Creating Your Welcome Book Outline
The Welcome Page
Your welcome page should contain all of the vital information your tenants will need during their first few days. Think of your welcome page as more of a quick-start guide. What information will they absolutely need to know while they are moving in?
Personally, I like to include the following:
- Entry Door Code
- Parking Information
- Guest Wifi Password & SSID
- Garbage Collection Schedule
- Landlord Contact Info
Local Points Of Interest
Highlight what makes your city great by recommending your favorite places to spend time around town. Whether it’s the local golf course, lakes, hiking trails, tennis courts…whatever it is, share your favorites with your new tenants. By sticking to recommendations that you personally enjoy, it adds a nice personal touch to the welcome book and it helps your tenants feel more comfortable in their new home.
Food & Drinks
Don’t make your tenants weed through the hundreds of local restaurants to find the good ones! Help them out by giving them a short list of your personal favorites to get them started.
Local Transportation
Having a quick reference sheet for local taxi services, bus lines & train stations can be a huge help for your new tenants. Make sure to include as much relevant information as possible so they don’t have to go digging for phone numbers, addresses and prices. You can really take this section to the next level by including a map of your local bus & train routes for them.
About The Property
I like to address all of the usual questions a new tenant may have in this section. For example:
- Parking Info
- Lawn Care & Snow Removal
- Garbage Collection
- Appliances, Fixtures & Painting
- Repairs & Maintenance Requests
Management Rules
This is a great opportunity to highlight the most important aspects of your lease agreement. While it may be tempting to just copy+paste your lease agreement, brevity is your friend here. Not many tenants will bother reading it if’s a dozen pages long! Keep it short and sweet and make sure to include all of the most important house rules on this page.
Contact Information
I like to break this page up into two sections.
Emergency contact information for the local Police Department, Fire Department, Hospital & Emergency Vet Info.
And the second section is just my personal contact information. ( Phone & E-mail)
Bonus!!
Not all welcome books are created equally. We’ve designed the welcome book template above specifically for landlords, so I thought it might be helpful if I briefly covered example outlines for Airbnb hosts and vacation rental property owners.
Download Our Welcome Book Template!
It takes A LONG TIME to build these from scratch!
I searched for over an hour trying to find some sort of template I could use to create my own Tenant Welcome Book and came up empty handed. That’s why I created this free resource to help you get started! It took me days to put this thing together, all i’m asking for is a quick and easy share in return 🙂
~Enjoy
As Promised, Here’s the download link for our Tenant Welcome Book Template! ~Enjoy
Next Steps
You got your template welcome book, so now it’s time to roll up your sleeves and get to work customizing it!
If there is enough interest, I may put together versions tailored specifically for Airbnb hosts & vacation rentals. Please let me know in the comments if this is something you would like to see.
Related Product Guides & Reviews
Javier says
Hello, After I uploaded the link on my Twitter, I still couldn’t access the welcome book template.
John Connor says
Thanks for letting me know! Sorry about that, I’ve gone ahead and just removed the social locker. Should be freely available now!
Anna says
Thank you, very helpful.
marcelo andrade says
Hi. I cant download the link is broken
https://mymodernhome.net/wp-content/uploads/08/WelcomeBook-v5.pdf
Alicia says
The pdf and Word Doc links do not work 🙁
Tyler says
Your download links aren’t working
Rinny says
Your template link is no longer available. Keep getting an error message.
John Connor says
Update links have been fixed. Thanks to everyone who posted.