Tenant screening is all about habits. Applicants with good habits tend to follow the rules and pay rent on time. But those who have been problems in the past often will fall back into those same patterns.
When you are considering your next tenant, you may want to perform more due diligence before you rent to applicants with these bad habits:
1. A tenant who has rented in the past but can’t produce a landlord reference is probably hiding something — like a prior eviction. What the tenant won’t tell you is as important as what he or she does say.
2. A landlord has the right to confirm that the applicant has sufficient income to cover the rent, regardless of the source of that income.
Those with criminal intentions often pay with cash. Those with inadequate income may exaggerate.
Applicants who wish to pay cash or are self-employed require more due diligence to confirm that their income is legitimate.
3. A tenant’s credit is a mess. If the credit check shows red flags, you are dealing with an individual who has had a tough time managing their money. That increases the risk that this person will pay late, or overextend and run out of money to pay rent. Running a credit report is the only way to get an honest picture of a rental applicant.
4. Professional tenants — those who have ripped off previous landlords — often ask to pay rent or deposit in installments. They say they will have the money by end of week, for instance. But these tenants know the game.
Once this tenant has a signed lease and the keys, he or she may delay over and over again, making up one excuse after another until you are forced to file for an eviction. When all is said and done, the tenant may have remained in the property for months rent-free.
If someone can’t pay the rent and deposit up front, it’s likely you can’t afford having them in your rental.
When choosing a tenant, it is important not to allow emotion to interfere with sound business sense. Bad tenants are highly skilled when it comes to fast-talking. Perhaps their style is to be friendly, or maybe they have a hard-luck story and appeal to a landlord who is a good person and wants to help.
But these tenants will not hesitate to take advantage of the situation and create income loss for the landlord. Trouble is there is no way of knowing for sure which tenants are bad and which are good until you run a tenant background check.
Don’t be left in the dark. Make sure you verify all the information in the rental application, run a credit check, and speak with the references, including the previous landlords. This process can reveal that your ideal tenant is nothing more than a scammer trying to get a free ride.
This post is provided by Tenant Verification Service, Inc., helping landlords reduce the risks of renting with fraud prevention tools that include Tenant Screening, Tenant Background Checks, (U.S. and Canada), as well as Criminal Background Checks, and Eviction Reports (U.S. only).
Click Here to Receive Landlord Credit Reports.
Disclaimer: The information provided in this post in not intended to be construed as legal advice, nor should it be considered a substitute for obtaining individual legal counsel or consulting your local, state, federal or provincial tenancy laws.
