Tenant Screening and Its Critical Ingredients
Attracting the best possible prospective tenant is the first step to selecting the best possible tenant. Well, the type of prospective tenant you attract is largely contingent on a number of factors. These factors basically include the rate of rents, neighborhood, unit mix and your marketing methods.
As far as I know, to attract a prospective tenant, one should note first that the relationship between a landlord and a tenant must be cooperative, and not adversarial. Much like a shopkeeper and his customer, a landlord and his tenant want to establish a long term mutually beneficial relationship. It must then be based on respect for every persons privacy, property as well as the right to profit.
However, one should know that besides a professional image, nothing should be more important than your intuition or gut reaction about a prospective tenant. Unfortunately, relying mainly on your perceptions or worse yet a managers first impression is no way to run a business. It is even more no way to determine who will be a responsible tenant. Oftentimes, the tenant may appear to be more financially capable and more substantial than he truly is. With this fact, perhaps the best tip that I can give you is to always check your prospective tenant out no matter what your gut reaction is about.
Application: The Backbone of Tenant Screening
As often said, the application is the backbone of tenant screening. It is particularly designed to force a prospective tenant into providing the most vital information accurately. It asks the applicant the most important questions, but much to it, an application has been created to eliminate any possibility of errors or omissions. This even minimizes confusion.
Having said all these, a proper application form must then be used. Perhaps the secret to reading a prospective tenant application is to determine inconsistencies.
Essential Factors for a Successful Tenant Screening
There are several factors that are mandatory for a successful tenant screening. These include the name, social security numbers, birth information, drivers license, address, banks and savings accounts, etc. Since, they are crucial to the success of a tenant screening, then theres no reason for us not to consider them. Lets take a look at each of them.