As a landlord within San Jose property management, one of the most important steps when renting out your vacant unit is finding a reliable tenant. After all, a poor tenant can prove to be more costly in the long run than an empty home. Finding a qualified tenant is no easy feat, but if you are consistent in your requirements, you should be just fine.
You can’t leave it to chance to decide whether a person will be a qualified tenant, so be sure you have a set of predetermined screening standards. By having a predetermined set of standards, you will be able to easily weed out the good renters form the bad.
Every landlord has a different set of standards, but generally you want your tenant screening to consist of credit checks, verification of renter’s information, landlord references and thorough applications. Once your screening standards are determined, you want to ensure that you follow the same provisions for every prospective tenant.
In this article, you will learn how to qualify prospective tenants in order to find the perfect, reliable renter to entrust with your investment.
Here at Real Estate Connections in Los Gatos, once we show the property to the prospective tenant, we ask them to fill out and complete a rental application. Generally, a well-formatted application will include important personal information on the renter in order to help conduct necessary background checks.
When you create the application, make sure there is space provided for the tenant’s full name, current address, date of birth, Social Security number and driver license details. Additionally, there should be room for rental history, employment history, bank account information and personal references.
Next, you want to check their landlord references and to verify the information provided on the rental application; this is called “rental verification.” To do this, contact their current or past landlord to find out additional information on the renter such as how long they’ve been renting or how many pets they have. This will give you an idea of how they behaved in the past as renters and thus, how they will act with you as well. It is highly recommended to request this information in writing from the previous landlord.
Lastly, and most importantly, you want to conduct a complete background check. This will help you discover things like bankruptcy, so don’t just settle for credit scores. Always look for what their full credit history is like how many accounts they have, if they’ve ever paid their rent late and how many payments they have been late for. Looking at this closely will help determine the applicants debt to income ratio.
Pre-qualifying tenants means the start of a good relationship with your tenant for a long period of time. By having a set of predetermined standards and implementing a strict tenant screening process, you can help eliminate any future issues and find a perfect tenant for your home.
If you have any questions, feel free to contact us…
