23 – Six Tips to Help You Pick Better Tenants for Your Investment Property

Episode Summary

In this episode of Get Real Wealthy Season 2, Quentin shares some tips that would help you pick better tenants.

Quentin says that choosing and filtering tenants is probably the most important thing you can do for having a successful investment property. He shares some tips and strategies that can help you save your investment property from potentially troublesome tenants. First of all, you want to have a good title for your ad. It should contain good information about the benefits, not the features of the property. The great thing about online ads is that you can put lots of pictures and lots of details. That’s something that you couldn’t necessarily do in print advertising.

Once you’ve got that online ad, you do not want them to call you directly. What you would want to do is have them complete some sort of questionnaire. This will greatly help you figure out if this tenant is going to be a good fit for you. If you don’t want to show anyone the unit, never give any reason other than that we have decided to go with another tenant and leave it at that. Next, when you show the unit to the potential tenant, observe how they present themselves. You want to look for red flags during the conversation, and avoid people who seem dramatic or tell horrible stories about their previous landlords.

So if you start to get a feeling from tenant, you’re should inform them that you decided to go with another tenant, after they’ve already left. The next step is to go over the application. Did they complete everything? If they have mentioned references, follow up with them to find out their previous experience. Thirdly, go through their social media, as people tend to share a lot online these days. Next, you should go through the different tenant databases that are available and see if you could spot any red flags. The fifth step of the sub process is to do a credit check. You can use services like Rentcheck Crop, where members of Durham REI and Education REI.

Lastly, he recommends using Rentify. It allows tenants to connect their bank account to the service and the service analyzes their bank account fees and they’re picking up over the last 12 months to let you know if there have been any issues or any pet charges that appear in there. In conclusion, he says that when people are already giving you problems during the screening process, they’re going to continue to give you problems throughout the tenancy. You can also check Quentin’s book The Property Management Toolbox to learn more.

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