You have probably heard the bad stories of tenants who don’t pay their rent on time or destroy rental units. A bad tenant can eventually become a nightmare for property owners, as well as both financially and emotionally draining. Fortunately, learning rental property management strategies can help you create the right lease agreement or rental agreement and ensure you get timely monthly rent while enjoying maximum ROI on your apartments for rent.
If you choose not to hire a licensed property manager or property management company, get ready to learn property maintenance and tenant placement tips. Do not let lease agreement and other contracts associated with the real estate industry scare you away from becoming one of the savvy rental property managers. Actually, choosing to control your residential property directly is a huge task, but it’s also a rewarding rental property management strategy.
Tenant placement and rental property management tips
There are good tenants and bad ones. Although there is no method to screen tenants that’s foolproof, there are important considerations you must make to find great tenants for your rental properties. Here are rental property management and tenant placement tips you should know.
1Prepare your rental properties for tenants.
Now that you have decided to rent your real estate investments, you must take the right steps to prepare them for potential tenants. Keep in mind that the condition of your rental properties will impact whether or not it is ready for tenants.
To stay competitive, you must ensure your rental units are appealing to potential tenants. That means you don’t need to wait for emergency repair requests or maintenance requests from tenants after they move into your rental units. Instead, you should address all rental property maintenance issues before you receive security deposits from incoming tenants. These repairs should include addressing known problems, complying with local zoning laws, and making the right upgrades to make your rental units more comfortable, enticing, and aesthetically pleasing.
Follow the laws when choosing tenants.
All residential property owners or real estate investors must treat all interested tenants equally. You should discriminate against some classes of people in any activity related to apartments for rent. Indeed, you should not discriminate based on national origin, sex, race, religion, familial status, and disability. So, ensure you follow laws when choosing tenants.
Choose tenants with good credit.
Look for tenants who are financially responsible and can manage timely rent payments. If they’re responsible for paying their utility bills, there’s a good chance they will make timely rent payments and take care of your apartment building. Getting credit checks as part of residential applicant screening has a fee, but it’s worth the effort.
Ideally, you should find tenants whose rent history is clean and whose monthly income is several times the required monthly rents. You may want to ask for pay stubs or contact their employer to confirm the applicant’s length of employment. Find out if the tenant has a history of paying utility bills on time.
Perform criminal background checks
Most independent landlords don’t know that criminal information is simply a public record, and you can access it from different courthouses. A criminal background check will turn into serious and minor offenses. This process requires you to have the tenant’s full name and date of birth. It’s important to mention that some people with bad criminal records may try to falsify this information. So, you may want to check the tenant’s valid ID just to be sure they are who they say they are.
Trust your instincts
It is possible to perform residential applicant screening, but your instincts may be a reliable judge of character. Perhaps you feel that something off about a certain tenant who otherwise seems good on paper. A few months later, you might realize that the tenant was using another person’s identity to apply for the house for rent. So, trust your rigorous screening processes but never ignore your instincts.
Summary
It is nearly impossible to protect yourself entirely from the possibility of having a bad tenant occupy your residential property. This risk often comes with being in the real estate business of having a house for rent. Be sure to consult with real estate professionals and implement the rental property management and tenant placement tips discussed in this article.
