tenant

5 Must-Do Tenant Screenings

Mario Avalos1 Comment

 

Tenant screening. Fundamentally necessary, but often overlooked. After two years of great tenancy, my client’s dwelling located at the Tuscany Townhomes in the West Kendall, is becoming vacant.

In my quest to find them great tenants, here are my tips to increase their odds of landing the right tenant with 5 basic screening criteria all potential tenants should go thru:

  1. Criminal Background: Ask tenants to get a police report from a local police station. It usually costs less than $1o per person and they can get in minutes. Or they can go to www.sentrylink.com and download their background at $20 per head.
  2. Credit History: Its always best for the tenant to get this on their own at any online provider. Make sure the ones you’re handed were obtained recently, it has the name of that tenant, a minimum of two credit scores are provided, and the history of such scores are also detailed.
  3. Proof of Employment: Depending on the employer, you can get this over the phone, but its always best on the company’s letter head. Each employer has a different procedure for releasing this information. At a minimum, the data provided should contain the tenant’s name and their salary.
  4. Proof of Income: Simply ask for recent pay-stubs which has the tenant’s and company name on it.
  5. Previous Landlord Verification: For this one you have to be sneaky. You simply ask the tenant for their previous landlord info…that is it. Then phone that landlord and ask three questions: a) would you rent to such tenants again b) what is the address of the rented property c) what is your complete name (the landlord’s).

As the previous landlord is telling you their name, pull up the address on the county’s tax records to verify that the address matches the name you are given. It all has to match! If the name of the property is under a company name, then you will have to take an extra step.

Go to www.sunbiz.org and pull up the name of the company. Here you will be able to see if the landlord you are talking to is a manager (owner) of the company.

Bonus!

If you are unable to verify employment on the company’s letter head, then at least get it verbally. THEN…not only ask tenant for pay-stubs…also for recent bank statements. And make sure the pay-stub amounts match the deposits in the bank statements.

So…need a tenant? Please complete below form.

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Cash Not Always King

Mario AvalosLeave a comment

wood door

In the real estate world, cash not always being king is an understatement. Why? well…in case of a dispute, if checks or money orders were used then you can simply follow the paper trail to help resolve the problem.

Now. You may be asking about the pic. Yes…that is me with a tenant from a unit in Vista Lago in Kendall Florida I rented to (I represented the landlord). The tenant is a woman that simply likes to deal in cash. For rentals, I do tend to make exceptions about not just taking checks or money orders but also cash. I do not advice it, but I do it sometimes if other factors fall in place such as:

tenant has good or better verifiable credit (600+ fico). tenant can verify employment and income commensurate of the monthly rental payment. tenant has no criminal background. tenant can provide verifiable previous landlord reference where I can verify that the previous landlord is the actual owner of the place.

And so on. Notice I often say “verifiable”. This is key as a lot of time, I get information from tenants that blow my mind.

One time, a tenant gave me a name and number of the previous landlord where he lived. So I called that landlord and asked for his complete name. So I pulled up title records and the name given did not match what was on title. Needless to say, the person on phone abruptly hung up.

Need to verify a name on a property’s title?

So…if you do decide to work with a tenant via cash, take a picture just like the one you see on this post. Actually you may wan to add a time-stamp on the pic (which I did not do). And right away, email that pic to all parties involved in the transaction with a note explaining the picture (example: 1st months rent April 1, 20013 by John Doe).

About the time stamp…there is software that detects wether the time stamp was photo-shopped or is legitimate. One less thing to worry about.