Once a tenant is in place, it can be a long, difficult and costly process to remove them. As a result, placing tenants in your property can be a little nerve-wracking. How do you ensure you lease to tenants who will pay the rent on time and keep your place in good condition?
The nature of tenant placement is that it’s risky, and there is no perfect way to do it. While you may want to consider every possible scenario, since it involves people it may be tough to account for everything that you’d encounter. That said, there are some basic steps to take in order to mitigate liabilities while successfully placing your new renters in the property:
- Insist on meeting the potential tenants in person.
- Rent only to those who have physically visited the property.
- Require a comprehensive rental application with details of who will be living on the property including each person’s work and rental history.
- Run a solid background check that includes the renters credit, criminal, and eviction history.
- Request referrals from their current employer and most recent landlord, and be sure to follow through on contacting each of those. If you want to go a step further, ask for the last two employers and landlords.
- Require each applicant to submit their most recent pay stub, a valid photo ID, and a recent bank statement.
Following these steps helps you answer a variety of helpful questions such as:
- Do the prospective tenants have a clear understanding of what the property and neighborhood are like? Will they be surprised by anything when they move in?
- Are they who they say they are?
- Can they pay the full rent on time, consistently?
- Are they fiscally and socially responsible?
- Are they solid workers with good relationships?
- Do they willingly provide everything needed to examine their history? (Reluctance is a big red flag!)
Rezide once had very friendly and eager applicants who we enjoyed meeting - we were hoping to place them in one of our specific rentals, but they were unable to provide bank statements. They indicated their bank wouldn’t provide them. While that may have been true, we had no way of knowing for certain. The same property was leased to a qualified applicant who could provide everything we required, less than a week later. This documentation failsafe provided protection from the unknown possibilities.
This process can be very time consuming, but absolutely worth it in the end. If you prefer to utilize a property manager, we are proficient in taking care of all of these steps on your behalf. If you have any questions about how to run a comprehensive background check, we’d be happy to discuss it with you. Give us a call at 408-982-5977 or email us at info@rezidehome.com. A member of our staff will get back to you.