How To Pick The Best Tenant
by
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Why Homeowners Get the Wrong Tenants
When you buy a piece of rental property, whether you live in it or not, it is a huge financial investment. Why then, do owners end up with tenants who do not pay their rent, destroy the apartment, and cause owners to pay massive legal fees, loss of rent money, inflict extreme stress, then leave your building to move into another newly prepared unit? What can a homeowner do to prevent renting to an irresponsible or high-risk tenant?
One of the most important decisions a homeowner with vacant apartments will make is to choose a tenant who will pay the rent, respect the property and the other tenants, and obey the laws of the land and the rules of their lease. However, around the country, there are countless numbers of homeowners who are keeping their vacant apartments empty. The primary reason is the fear or past experience of renting to the ‘wrong’ tenant.
If you have rental property, you want to get the most income out of it, while keeping expenses low on your investment. You may not always have the funds or desire to use an outside real estate broker. Many owners like to rent their own apartments to control who will live either with them and their family in the same building, or in an investment apartment.
By reading this book, you will learn basic and effective methods of the tenant selection process used by professional property managers. You will learn from an experienced renter of apartments, which decisions and procedures work best, and which techniques will not get you the kind of tenant you need and desire.
I have three primary reasons why I think homeowners, landlords, and/or managers end up with poor choices of tenants. For the most part, there are three areas of omission:
- Owners do not check or verify all of the applicant’s information;
- Owners accept the rental applicant’s explanations and excuses instead of searching for the facts;
- Owners do not ask the right questions or enough questions
Some homeowners allow a total stranger to occupy their real estate financial investment. They take the minimal amount of time and spend as little money possible to investigate a rental applicant. If the applicant is friendly, smiles a lot, is personable, and appears to be ‘neat and clean’, he or she can get the keys to an apartment with little else than a security deposit and the first month’s rent. There are owners who will rent their apartments to their relatives and/or friends of their children or neighbors, without checking anything at all.
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About the Book
“How to Pick The Best Tenant” is a tenant selection guidebook for homeowners, rental and property managers, and real estate investors. It outlines and details proven methods to find and rent to the best-qualified tenant from a pool of applicants. Chapters include:
- How to find and keep long term, stable tenants
- Why using a process is better than your intuition
- How to calculate if an applicant can afford your rent
- How to tell if you have a high-risk candidate
- Which renting methods to avoid
- Renting to friends and/or relatives
- Web site information
You Need This Book If:
- You are a First Time Home Buyer with Tenants
- You Do Not Know How to Find or Pick a Tenant
- You Have Made Poor Tenant Choices in the Past
- You are Unfamiliar with Federal Fair Housing Laws
- You Want to Rent Your Apartments On Your Own
“Carolyn’s [property management] activities and experiences allow her to view issues from a variety of lenses. She is highly successful at structuring and framing complex regulations and policies into clear, concise and meaningful learning experiences”
Mary Frances Mitchner – Management Consultant
“Carolyn combines her knowledge of property management and services, and shares this information with others as an author with this book”
Janine Spinola-Taylor – Nonprofit Deputy Director
“Carolyn can make you laugh while getting straight to the heart of the matter”
Barbara Post - Teacher
About the Author
Carolyn Gibson® owns Synergy Professional Services in Boston, Massachusetts. She is a veteran senior property manager and consultant in the management, marketing, staff training, and leasing of residential, nonprofit, and government-assisted properties. She also provides expert witness opinion in residential property management standards and techniques.
Ms. Gibson is a former Certified Property Manager® designation from the Chicago based Institute of Real Estate Management®. She has been published in the Journal of Property Management (JPM), and the New England Real Estate Journal, and featured in The Boston Globe and Boston Herald newspapers.
In addition to this book, Gibson has recently published "Secrets to a Successful Eviction for Landlords and Rental Property Managers". Carolyn is a graduate of Simmons College in Boston, Massachusetts.