You’ve purchased a rental property and it’s currently vacant. What do you do now? It’s getting harder and harder to make ends meet and you’ve got to rent out that property just to pay the mortgage. You’ve found a person that is willing to move in immediately, but don’t bother with credit checks or reference checks- the person seems honest so you decide to rent to them.
What could go wrong? This lovely new tenant could be unstable and pull a knife on her roommate. Yes – it happened to us at 3am on a Wednesday night several years ago. We had to call the police and have them separate the two tenants. The innocent roommate moved out the next morning and we were left with the knife wielding tenant who then stopped paying rent and refused to move out. It took us three months to evict her. We had to send a collection agency after her for the rent money. We never received a dime.
Now, of course, we are very picky when it comes to finding a good renter. We follow these 5 straightforward steps and they’ve never let us down:
– Step 1: Prepare the unit for showing
– Step 2: Get your paperwork in order
– Step 3: Research the market rents and place your ad
– Step 4: Show your space
– Step 5: Choose your new tenant.
Step 1: Prepare the property for viewing by prospective tenants
The better it looks the more likely you’ll find a good tenant for the space. Make it easy for someone to visualize themselves living happily in that space.
So how do you make your property look and smell nice?
– fill any holes and put a fresh coat of paint over the walls
– check all of the doors, locks, plug ins, appliances and light bulbs to ensure they are in working order
– create a checklist to use when the tenant moves in and out. Include details for everything in every room and the current condition- doors, windows, drapes/blinds/shutters, plugs and light switches, shelving, appliances etc.
– open all the doors and windows to help make the unit smell fresh.
Step 2: Make sure you have your paperwork ready
Good tenants respond to good landlords, and good landlords have their paperwork in order. You can do this by going online to run a search for landlord forms, or by contacting the local residential housing branch of your government. Landlord forms include:
– applications for tenants
– forms for rental/lease agreement
– eviction notices and similar forms that you may need in the future. It’s best to have them right away so you don’t have to scramble to get them in the future if you really need them.
Quick tip: Every state or province may have different forms, so make sure you have the form that is legal for your area.
Step 3: Research the rent rates and place your ad
Make sure the Price is Right!
The perfect price is actually one that is a little bit below market value. This will attract more prospective tenants, ensures your property rents faster, and you will have a much better chance of keeping tenants for a longer period of time. To find the “perfect price”, research similar units in the newspapers and using online rental databases.
Effective methods for advertising your unit are:
– e-mail all your friends and family and let them know about the property that you have that available to rent. They might know someone who knows someone who is looking for a new place to live
– use online classifieds and other online rental databases
– put a sign up on your lawn or in the window of the unit, with a phone number
– place a classified ad in your local newspaper- ads placed in weekend editions will most likely be viewed by the most people
– university Housing Boards.
Step 4: How to show the space
Open houses are still the best way to show off your property. The best thing to do is decide on a two hour block during an evening or weekend, and then have a back up time for a second viewing (if you don’t find a good tenant after the first viewing). When someone wants to see it, you can tell them about the viewing times. This way you’re not spending all your time showing the unit.
Be dressed in business casual attire with tenant application forms on hand when you greet the prospective tenants.
Open houses are great, as they can create an atmosphere of demand. Knowing another person may want to rent the apartment makes others feel that they should want it too. Urge people to complete an application form before they leave so that you can write your impression about the prospective tenant right on their form.
Step 5: How to select your new tenant
– study applications carefully, looking for conflicting information or any kind of gaps in time pertaining to where the applicant was living
– always run a credit check. In this day and age it’s not enough for people just to have a good job or for you to have a good feeling about them. Verify it.
– reference checks. Be diligent when doing reference checks, asking questions like “Would you rent to them again?”, “What is your current relationship with them?” and “How long have you known them?”
– check your gut -this can turn out to be the most important part of the process. If you get a bad feeling about them, despite everything else looking good, trust that feeling. You have to choose a tenant that you feel good about.
Once you are sure about your choice and you have deposited taken a rent cheque from your chosen tenant to the bank , make sure you let all the other possible tenants know that the unit is rented. If they ask why they weren’t chosen, never indicate that it was because of race, religion, age or social status- regardless of how you actually made your choice. It’s far better to say “the other tenant had a very strong application”.
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