Tenant Screening Tips – Medford Rentals
Finding great Tenants is 90% of the battle when it comes to improving your occupancy rates and reducing your vacancy rates in your rentals. If you can get this down to a science (and a little bit of art too), then you are well on your way to putting more cash into your pocket!
The benefits of a great Tenant are immeasurable:
1. Rent is on time, worry free.
2. Your property is well taken care of.
3. They take care of small problems, or at least they let you know about hem before they become big problems.
4. They don’t have any drama.
So it behooves you as the Medford Property Owner, to invest some extra time and perform some excellent due diligence in finding your next Tenant for your rental.
Here are a couple tips that can save you some time. We can weed out the majority of people calling about our rentals right over the phone. Your time as a Landlord is a precious commodity. Just like when we hire a new employee, you need to look for reason NOT to accept them, not for reason TO accept them. It is very easy to overlook things that could come back and haunt you with this Tenant. These following tips will allow you to weed people out without even having to mer them in person:
1. Ask them what their monthly income is. If it is not greater than 3X your monthly rent, then they will not qualify for your property.
2. Ask them if you run their background check, what will you find. More times then not, people will tell the truth. If they have a felony, it is an automatic rejection for us. You may decide to be more flexible on that, but we choose to hold true to that rule. You can decide about the other infractions that you find. If the person doesn’t tell you about something that you then later dig up in their background and criminal check, then they were holding the truth from you in an effort to deceive, which is not good either.
3. Ask what their credit is. Again, people have a pretty good idea of that their credit score is. You know what your limits are, so why not screen them out now instead of later? If they are close, then you can have them go ahead and drive by the property and apply if they like. But asking on the first call is a best practice and can save you a lot of time on someone who might otherwise have poor credit and couldn’t have qualified for your rental.
4. Ask why they are moving. If they complain about the current property, or the medford property management company and the landlord in a negative way, then that should be a red flag. This could be true, but we have found that it is usually not. If they are outright complaining about the situation and it seems that everything is everyones fault but theirs, then they may have a dark cloud following them. Be very weary of these types of applicants for your property.
5. Ask them how long they lived in their last rental. If they lived there for a short time, again this should be a red flag. There may be reasons for everything, but as a general rule , those who hop from rental to rental every year or less, are more than likely going to do the same to you. And we all know that having a long term paying Tenant is what we are really after.
Lastly, when you are done asking them the above 5 questions, instruct them to drive by your Medford property (or surrounding area), and then if they are still interested, to call you back for a showing. That should eliminate about 80% of the lookers out there that are not serious and save you a lot of time in finding only the best quality Tenants on the market today.