Tenant Screening Methods You Need To Know

The screening process and the background check during your lease up are obviously important. The due diligence you do on the front end as we call it is the most important part of your work as a landlord or a property manager. If you don’t take the time to do these things correctly up front, you will definitely pay for it at the back end. It is really crucial that you put the time and effort into tenant screening. This will give you a much better experience as a landlord and a better time down the road. Most of the people who come to us while managing properties on their own did not do the work up front and then they find themselves having problems with a tenant in one of their properties. Don’t skimp on the screening work.

As an owner, you should be using the state of the art background screening tools that are available to landlords and property managers. There are a lot of different companies you can use and basically with the click of a mouse you can find out everything you need to know about a potential tenant. It’s almost scary how fast we can find out what we need to know.

Make sure your tenants fill out the application completely. Stress to your applicants that it has to be 100 percent complete. No box or line can be left unanswered. You are requesting all of this information for a reason, and if information is left out, you are not going to be able to process the application.

Once you have the completed application, you can move forward with the background check. The company we use often gives us our results right away. Then, we can go through those results and get an idea of credit, criminal and background information. You always want to start with a good credit score. If it’s not perfect, that’s okay; you can meet that risk by charging a higher security deposit if necessary. You just want to know where exactly the applicant stands financially.

These are the elements we are talking about when we discuss tenant screening and lease up. Most property management companies, Advanced Solutions Property Management included, will provide lease up services as an a la carte item if you do not want to contract for full service property management. If you have issues with finding and screening a tenant, we can help you.

Please contact us at Advanced Solutions Property Management for more information, or if you have any questions about effective property management.