Screening tenants is an important part of being a landlord. By running the appropriate checks on potential tenants, you can protect your investment by ensuring that you are renting to qualified individuals who can afford to pay rent, have a history of paying on time and taking care of the rental property, and haven’t had any issues with landlords in the past.
Understanding how to screen tenants, is essential in reducing the risk of having problems with your tenants and protecting your investment in your rental property for the long term, which is why we’re sharing 4 tips on screening tenants in Orlando.
4 Tips on Screening Tenants
Run Credit, Background, and Income Checks
Running these baseline checks will immediately help you identify bad potential tenants and highlight which tenants have the potential to get shortlisted due to their prime candidacy.
A credit check will show whether the tenant has a history of paying their debts on time. Late or missed payments can indicate that the tenant may have difficulty making rent payments on time in the future.
A background check will reveal any criminal history the applicant may have. Criminal history is crucial to consider because you don’t want to rent to someone with a history of violence, theft, or other crimes that could pose a risk to you, your property, or your other tenants. Just be careful – there are limits on the use of criminal records in housing decisions.
An income check will show you how much money the tenant makes and whether they have a steady source of income. You need to verify this because you want to ensure the tenant can afford to pay rent – without living paycheck to paycheck or cutting it close every time.
You can run these checks yourself or hire a professional screening service to do it for you. Just ensure you’re complying with the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
Check Tenant Rental History
Checking a tenant’s rental history is important because it will reveal whether they have been delinquent on rent payments in the past or have had any issues with previous landlords. You can ask tenants to provide the information from their past rental history, or you can run a check online using a third-party service.
If you’re asking the tenant themselves for the information, ensure you have the time and resources to verify it. Don’t take their word for it – cross-reference any information provided to ensure everything is accurate.
Using a third-party service, tenant screening can help do some legwork for you without requiring as much time and effort, but they can cost you more up front. Still, it may be worth investing a bit more during the search process to find the perfect fit for your rental property.
Reach Out to Previous Landlords
In addition to checking a tenant’s rental history, it’s also a good idea to reach out to their previous landlords. Talking directly to their past landlords will give you firsthand information about what it was like to work with the tenant and whether they were respectful of the property, paid rent on time, and caused any problems during their tenancy.
If the landlord has nothing but good things to say about the tenant, that’s a good sign. But even if there are some negative comments, it’s pivotal that you take them into context.
For example, if the only issue was that the tenant was late on rent a few times but always paid eventually, that’s not necessarily a deal-breaker. Still, it may be helpful to know if you want to avoid reminding your tenants about their upcoming rent or chasing them down to get each payment.
The key is to get as much information as possible so you can make an informed decision about whether to rent to a potential tenant.
These calls can often be a great source of qualitative information about potential tenants – how easy they are to communicate with, whether they went above and beyond to care for the property as their own, how they treated the neighbors, what condition they left their last rental properties in, etc.
Complete a National Eviction Check
An eviction check will show you whether the tenant has ever been evicted from a property in the past, which is a good indicator of whether the tenant will be able to follow your rental agreement and take care of your property.
Evictions don’t always appear on credit checks, so this extra step is worthwhile. On the Orange County Clerk of Court’s website, you can find resources regarding tenant and landlord obligations and evictions.
If you’re considering renting to someone with a past eviction, get more information about the situation before making a final decision. Talk to the tenant about what happened and why and see if they have a solid plan for preventing it from happening again.
Sometimes, evictions result from an unusual scenario that has since cleared up or temporary circumstances that are no longer relevant.
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