Good tenants are essential for landlords and apartment managers to maintain a profitable rental business. Good tenants offer protection to the property, are good neighbors and provide predictable income. In this era where rental properties are at a premium some may think that gaining a new tenant would be fairly easy. However, finding a tenant to occupy a vacant unit is one thing but to get a great tenant a landlord first needs to perform a thorough tenant screening. Screening new tenants should include public record checks, credit checks, verifications, reference checks and an interview before making a leasing decision. This may seem like a lot of work but a professional third party tenant screening company can easily help a landlord or property manager perform almost all of these tasks.
Having a face to face interview with prospective tenants will reveal a lot of important information and then running the background checks will confirm whether or not this information is indeed accurate.
The costs involved to properly vet an applicant is minimal when compared to the costs of a bad tenant. The more information a landlord or property manager has to assess a potential tenant’s riskiness the higher the chances are in making a wise leasing decision. A wise leasing decision is one that will land a good tenant and predictable income with very low risk to property and the community.
Some States like Arizona have favorable landlord laws but even in States like this landlords need to follow and know the specific landlord/tenant provisions that cover security deposits, access to the property and notice when ending a renter’s tenancy… Of course there are still federal laws that need to be followed such as fair housing laws and habitability.
Going the extra length when evaluating prospective tenants is certainly worth it and having an in-person interview is the best way to begin that process. Following the interview a comprehensive tenant background check should be conducted to reveal all pertinent information. If the reference checks, verifications, criminal background check and credit check do not match up with the information revealed in the initial interview than the applicant may be dishonest or at least inconsistent. In this instance signing a lease at this point would be too big of a risk to take.
To learn more about how having a thorough tenant screening process helps gain high quality tenants please read recent TenantScreeningUSA.com press release.