How to Proceed with Selecting Your New Tenants
Tenant selection is one of the most stressful and uncertain aspects of the renting process. Whether or not you look for the best classified sites or newspapers to locate potential tenants, you can never be too sure of who ends up ringing your bell and asking for lodgings.
The tenant selection process is meant to facilitate all that and eliminate any difficulties and obstacles you may run into while deciding who the best candidate is that you can invite to live in your home.
Where to Find Tenants
In order to find the best tenants, you have to let them find you. Placing strategic ads on well-known rental sites and in printed media can ensure that news gets out of the vacancies you have available.
Although not usually as effective, word of mouth or the placement of a sign in your window can also be useful in getting local South Florida seekers notified of your intentions.
Our Realty45 Inc experts can provide you with professional services for placing your ads and finding a new tenant as quickly as possible, while also offering advice and tips on how to plan your first meeting and what to consider when talking to your candidates on the phone for the first time.
Preparing Your Property for First Contact
Being prepared to show your property to each new candidate is one of the best signs of being a reliable landlord.
After you have tidied up the area your future tenant will be living in, make a list of all the facilities provided – including furniture, heating, air conditioning, the state of the plumbing system). Most importantly, be honest about any small issues that may be present.
During first contact, you will see that all this is extremely important when it comes to noticing the candidate’s first reactions and what grabs their attention the most.
Are they pleasantly impressed by the property? Do they feel the need to point out small flaws? Do they have demands that you may or may not be able to accommodate?
By observing all these facts and being completely honest from the start, you can easily base your first impressions of prospective tenants on deductive reasoning instead of just relying on suppositions or losing sight of any obvious issues.
Application and Approval
The most important things to remember with regards to the application process are to treat each prospective candidate fairly and provide them with a detailed and professional rental application.
Make sure they fill out all the details, and ask them to return the application as soon as possible if they want to be included in the screening process.
Look for inconsistencies, signs that may point to how suitable the candidate may be or details that would make you think twice about their ability to pay the rent in the long run. Only after considering such aspects carefully, notify the person you’ve chosen and set up the date and time of the lease signing.
An important tip while you’re evaluating applications is to do a credit check on each applicant in order to find out how they handle their debts and whether or not they have any credit infractions. This will give you an idea of how they’ll be managing their rental payments in the future.
Signs of Trouble
If you’re unsure of how to conduct your search for the “best” tenant, here are a few tips on what signs to look for if you want to know from the start whether you should go ahead with your plans or not with the person you want to rent to:
- Punctuality: If the candidate is more than half an hour late and hasn’t notified you in advance, that could already be considered a first “red flag”.
- Meeting face to face is essential when it comes to screening tenants who will supposedly be living in your own home. Do not close deals over the internet or by phone without having met the person.
- Lack of professionalism: if the prospective tenants are unsure of whether or not they want the place or if they didn’t come prepared to fill in an application or present a deposit, it might mean that you’ll have to deal with an inconsistent and irresponsible tenant in the future.
- Manners and attitude represent another sign that could show you whether or not the person you want to rent to may be difficult to deal with in the future. If they didn’t wipe their feet when they’ve entered your home or they were smoking the whole time, you might want to reconsider having them as a tenant.
- Repeatedly criticizing the property, as opposed to constructive suggestions, may also be a sign of trouble, whether the purpose of that is to negotiate a better price or not.
Closing the Deal
Once everything is in good order, it’s time to sign the lease and close the deal. Now, here it’s very important to have a quality residential lease and to go over each step in detail. Also, observe your new tenant’s approach to it.
Are they arguing about any of the aspects presented in the contract? If you simply can’t come to an agreement, it may be better to let them go than to have to deal with constant arguments later on.
Ultimately, remember the importance of the contract, as well as that of the entire screening process. After all, the lease will often represent a long term deal, and if you want your rental investment to go smoothly, you need to get tenants whom you can trust and relate to as much as possible.
