Landlord’s advice: Choosing the right tenant

Getting prospective tenants interested in your property may seem the hardest part of finding a tenant, but this is only the beginning. Successful landlords know the most important stage is selecting the right tenant……………………………………………………………………..

• It can be a good idea to use a lettings agency to vet tenants as they will be familiar with all the necessary checks and will carry these out on your behalf. Of course this will cost you money so you may choose to do this yourself.
• If you decide to do the checks yourself then be sure to carry out the checks rigorously and find all the requried information before making a decision.
• Before carrying out any checks you need to get permission from the prospective tenants. You will find that is a check in itself, as anyone who will not agree to checks being carried out is unlikely to be a good tenant.
• Financial information is crucial! You must be sure that the tenant can meet the rental payments every month. Find out current employment details, including salary and position. As a ball park figure the rent should be no more than 40% of the tenant’s salary.
• You should also ask for previous landlords references. Even if they can afford the rent, you need to avoid messy disrespectful tenants who could damage your property. It is a good idea to ask for a reference from their landlord before last as the current one may give them a good reference if he is desperate to get rid of the tenant.
• It is also a good idea to find out how long the tenant stayed at their last property as this will give you an idea of how long they may stay at yours. 
• Identity fraud is an increasing risk so make sure their name and previous addresses are genuine.
• You may come across applications with no rental history if this is the tenant’s first rental property. In this instance you should ask for a guarantor, and make sure you submit the guarantor to financial checks.

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This entry was posted on Friday, February 19th, 2010 at 5:15 pm and is filed under Landlords. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.