One of the most important things you can do in the rental business is to find the right tenant. Your not going to get it right every time but in most instances if you screen them properly you can lessen the number of headaches you will have in most cases. There are hundreds if not thousands of articles that discuss screening tenants. There are slight variations of course between checking backgrounds and services associated with such and checking a tenant’s credit however for the most part most of these articles are very similar. What makes this one different? Well, really not much as it pertains to the actual screening of tenants. What is different however are the following examples of why you want to check your tenants. As you will see if you don’t you will be dealing with problems you will definitely not want to deal with. I would like to say that these examples of poor tenant screening are not based on my own experiences but unfortunately they are.
Example 1
The Red Headed Monster
I have always had one property that seems to consistently test my management skills. Whether it be a roof, a furnace or hot water tank this property seems to always have a problem. Compounding this of course is that the house is in a questionable area in Batavia NY. This house is a duplex and from the outside has vinyl siding and new windows(now a new roof). But the problem yet remains that the home is in a questionable area making it difficult to rent. When I first bought this property I thought “how hard can it be to find a good tenant”. Well….it’s not easy. Since the beginning I have had difficulty so in many cases I skipped every step in the screening process minus getting the new tenant’s name and initial payments. So as you can imagine from the heading I finally got bit, almost literally. I had a vacancy in the property unexpectedly and I immediately began searching tenants. In this case it became first come first serve and after only one week I had found a replacement tenant. At first I received payments meaning for the first month only then nothing. The person who lived there, whom I would love to name, but can’t, said he had multiple reasons for not paying rent. He cited not having a second key for the front door as his front runner. I also found out that in the short time they were there they neglected to add some guests onto the lease…..BED BUGS!!!!! When I spoke to the Red Headed Monster(Red Headed is accurate but in reality he was a sissy) he said he now wanted me to pay them for the time that they lived there and had “problems” and then they would begin paying me again. Needless to say this is when the 3-day notice was served. Now remember a problem property that I was so eager to rent was in fact rented however I was just missing a little something called rent. So after he was served it took just over a month to get them out and go through the eviction process. There was damage to the apartment that ended up costing thousands more to get it ready to rent again. Hold for the moral, I have a couple more for you.
Example 2
Lights Out!!!
In this case I had just purchased a property. It was in excellent condition and in a much better neighborhood then the previous example. I was eager to rent it simply because I didn’t want a new property with a vacancy. I wanted cash flow!!! I received the opposite. This tenant we will call “Mr. Excuses” Oh you have one of those too!!! So Mr. Excuse moved into the apartment and had no problem paying the initial costs. Then only two months after moving in I received a complaint from my lower tenant that the new tenant was running extension cords to one of his outlets. When I asked Mr. Excuses about it he said that he had a minor utility payment problem that he was fixing. Let’s see he can’t pay for his electric but he is going to pay his rent. Think again. Well it didn’t take long for the rent to go to. When I finally gave him a 3 day notice I was able to get into the apartment. No electric plus food in fridge rotting is a bad combination. I’m thinking he forgot to clean too because there were half eaten sandwiches all over along with hungry visitors. Cockroaches!!!! He left prior to completing the eviction process but needless to say the damage was done and I was about to pay for it. Moving on to Example 3 just keep in mind I can keep going.
Example 3
Glutten for punishment!!!
This is the finale!!! I would like to say it’s the best but really they are all pretty bad so there are no awards for being best here. When I met these tenant’s, for our purposes here we will call them Slob 1 and Slob 2, they were very unkept and literally smelled. Both were severely overweight and smokers. Sounds like the ideal tenant, right? Wrong!!! Well at the time and when I say that tax time they were. Mostly because they offered to pay 3 months in advance plus the security deposit. So what could go wrong? Well that was the first and last payment I received and on time of that as cited previously they were not clean people. Let’s see when I went back into the apartment for the first time I found out that they had 3 dogs that believed the apartment was a litter pan. They lived in it like that by the way. Also they had a baby and had apparently never heard of a diaper genie. Of course after this and not receiving payments I filed for the eviction but they weren’t done yet. Why you ask? BEDBUGS AGAIN!!! I was able to finally get them out and again thousands of dollars to rent that apartment again.
So here’s the moral of the story. Whether you are using the tenant selection process that I going to outline here or someone else’s I cannot stress hard enough to use something. Use the resources you have and follow the steps. You will most assuredly thank yourself later.
Step 1
Have your tenant complete your application, COMPLETELY!!! We have our application in the forms section of this webpage for you to review and use.
Step 2
Make sure tenant provides you with a photo identification. Make sure it’s not a library card. Also make sure you have a valid address for the tenant via some form of identification.
Step 3
Utililize a credit service to run the tenant’s credit. There are several available for you to do that. If you don’t want to spend the money on that you can request two current utility bills that show their payments were currently paid. They don’t like the dark, if the tenant is behind on their utility bills the odds of you receiving rent are highly diminished.
Step 4
Contact all of the references including the previous landlord. In the forms section of this page I have questions to ask both references and the landlord. Caveat Emptor!!! The previous landlord could give them glowing reviews just to solve their own problem. This more then likely won’t happen but keep it in the back of your mind.
Step 5
VERIFY INCOME SOURCES!!! Contact their employer(s) and verify with current pay stubs. If the tenant has social services verify that they are going to be eligible for the services. If it’s social security, disability, etc. just make sure they are consistently going to receive the payment. No income= No rent.
Step 6
Check the tenant’s criminal background. Now many people have had run ins with the law however we are more specifically looking for tenants who have a classification as sex offenders. These persons typically are required to register their residence in other words registering your house.
Step 7
RESULTS!!! If your tenant has passed all of the outlined steps of the process then it’s time to send out your approval.
I will say that despite your best efforts sometimes you will have a tenant who slips through the cracks. Unfortunately you can’t stop that but using these steps will cut down on the opportunity for these pro scumbags to get through. Let them be someone else’s problem, not yours. By now you should see the importance of screening tenants in an appropriate manner. Learn from my mistakes it costs you a lot more time and money in the long run if you don’t.
Gary Miller