BEST PRACTICES TO SCREEN TENANTS
As a landlord, you need to look objectively at each application. You need to determine, and have in writing, the criteria that you are going to screen for. Then you need to always be consistent in applying that criteria to each application. Below you will find the best practices to screen tenants.
Screen Rental Applicants Carefully
A lot of times a landlord will get an application and be so excited to get a place filled they might just breeze through it, but something you need to remember is you are not in the business of providing housing to people. If you were, you would be acting very differently. You would find anybody and everybody, and let them live in your home, in your properties, but you’re not in that business.
You’re looking for a business partner, right? You’re looking for somebody that’s going to sign a contract with you, a lease agreement and is going to behave as a business partner. So that’s really important. Make sure you’re looking for a business partner, not just somebody that wants to live in your home.
Tools For Screening
The other thing you need to make sure that you’re ready for before you even start advertising your place for rent, is making sure you have the right tools in place. You need to be able to perform a credit check and thorough criminal background check and have that in place before you even start getting applications in.
In addition to that, a resource that Kasteel Property Management has is the attorney that we use. We’re able to tap into their database, and they’ve been collecting a database of problem tenants for decades from all the property managers that they do business with. So if there’s been a tenant in their past that’s been evicted, that there’s been collections against, they have a huge database that we’re able to compare our applications with as kind of an extra check to help make sure that we’re running to the right people.
Trust the process
Remember when you’re doing all these checks, your goal is to solve problems before they even happen, right? You can do that with thorough screening, so it’s really important that you don’t get careless in your screening of applicants. Even the application process itself is part of your screening procedures. If somebody can’t fill out the application properly, if they can’t follow instructions, if they want to be pushy, and just skip to the end, and want you to just sign them up, then that is not someone you want to rent to. That right there is part of your screening process. If they won’t follow the application process, they’re failing in that aspect of your screening process as well.
