Indeed, the tenant screening process is one of the most difficult tasks for a property owner. Because, when you have a good tenant, you can calmly sleep at night without having to worry about the payment, your property damage, and not receiving complaints from other tenants or neighbors.
The problem is that any potential tenant can behave as the best tenant during the initial tenant screening or meeting. But if you want to be confident in having the best tenant, you must be keen on the tenant screening process before proceeding to lease signing.
Here are some steps in tenant screening.
1. Application request.
You should require potential tenants to secure a rental application form with detailed information. Therefore, it will allow you to accumulate the necessary information to decide if the tenant will fit your qualifications.
Here are some of the information that you need to a lookout for during the tenant screening
- Personal information: name, age, date of birth.
- Contact information: phone number, email address, current address, and emergency contacts.
- The number of household members: you can also include pets and lifestyle information of each member, like smokers.
- Employment information: current employer, length of employment, job title.
- Income and expenses: it includes monthly gross income, additional income sources, and average monthly payments.
- Residential or renter history: including previous addresses with landlord contact information, period of rental dates, amount of rental fees, and most significantly, the reason for moving.
- Financial information: it covers bank accounts and credit cards ( balances and minimum monthly payments ).
- Credit history: check for the history of late payments and collections.
- Personal references: it includes name, length of acquaintance, and contact numbers.
2. Conduct a credit check during the tenant screening
You can assess the applicant’s financial status by checking their credit report. Certainly, it also shows you the tenant’s previous credit history years ago. Thus, you must consider the tenant’s credit history and current debt.
3. Background check during the tenant screening
A background check is a remarkably essential step in the screening process. It will help protect the property, other tenants, neighbors, property owners, and the community. A background check includes criminal records, previous eviction, and public records. Several reasons why background checks are required are for the safety of your neighbors, community, and yourself. It also reduces tenant moveout turnover. And if you will bypass this process, you may be accountable if something messed up.
4. Verification of income, employment, and other information.
You should invest time to verify the given information of the tenant. Some will take advantage of a higher percentage of getting approved for a rental property to avoid falsifying information. If you failed to do so, it would result in tenants cannot afford to pay the rent, not paying on time, and not a concerned about taking care of the property. You should contact landlords and employers to validate if the information given by the tenant is precise and up to date.
5. Interview of the tenant.
By doing an interview, you can discover more about the tenant and their lifestyle; you can also discuss some of the information on the application. You can do a simple phone interview like nowadays that we are in a pandemic which is safer for both parties. But if you want a personal interview, it is still much better to obtain more impressions if the tenant will meet the qualifications.
Handling tenant screening for rental property is honestly stressful. It requires meticulous attention to each information the prospect tenant will provide you. You will invest a lot of time and effort in doing this process. Lack of success will lead to a horrendous risk of getting the not-so-good tenant.
Pro Realty thoroughly screens all prospective tenants, handles all property showing and paperwork, etc., to ensure you get a quality tenant. Contact us today for more information. Request Management Quote
