Being a landlord can either be a dream come true, or a nightmare. We’ve experienced both. We learned quickly – you NEED to know how to vet your prospective tenants.
Hopefully sharing our experience vetting our prospective tenants will help you avoid the nightmare part.
In the summer of 2018, after 6 years owning it, we sold the two family home that had housed us, our baby boy and 6 (drastically) different families.
Our Landlord Story
In 2012, almost a year into marriage, we bought our first home.
It was a beautiful, 2200+ square foot, 1920’s, two family home with gorgeous wood-work throughout. People would walk through it and fall in love. It was one of those kind of houses.
Both upper and lower apartments had almost identical footprints, however the 3rd floor added livable space for the 2nd floor apartment. Both apartments had 9 foot tall ceilings, and everyone would make a point to say how being on the second floor literally felt like a first floor.
It was move in ready, but needed work to be nice.
Before renting out the lower apartment, we decided to rip up the 1960’s stick down ’tile’ in the downstairs kitchen and lay new laminate. (Which was a huge nightmare – you were stuck to the floor near permanently if you dared put a shoe all the way down.)
Then we added our newer stove that came with us from our first apartment and did some plumbing work.
The bathroom got painted, friends helped us scrub it from top to bottom, the carpets were cleaned and we were ready to rent!
How To Vet Prospective Tenants
Be friendly – people are more interested to share what’s going on in their lives with someone who is welcoming and accommodating.
That’s not to say be sneaky and prying. We were genuinely interested in the lives of those potentially living below us in our apartment.
Be aware – sometimes the way people dress, talk and carry themselves is telling enough.
- Are they clean looking/smelling?
- If it’s a couple, how do they talk to one another?
- Are they snapping at or yelling at their children?
- Are they polite to you?
- Do they know how to use full sentences?
Make sure it is clear on your listing what can be expected:
Are pets allowed? If so, what kind?
We have always allowed pets on certain terms. Cats and small to medium dogs were allowed, WITH an added non-refundable security deposit and monthly fee of 15/cat or 25/dog. (Because of the small size of our shared yard, large dogs were not permitted.)
Is the property non-smoking?
Do they smell of cigarette smoke? If your house is non-smoking, inviting a smoker in, even if they promise to leave the property every time they want to light one up, could mean trouble. Definitely use discretion.
Also, if they DO follow through and leave the premise every time, you are potentially offending the neighbors if they just walk down the street.
Is your house handicap friendly?
Ours was not. There were at least 8 steps to get up to the first apartment, and the laundry for that apartment was in the basement.
Is it month to month or yearly leases?
If you live in a northern area (as we do in Western New York), doing month to month can seriously come back to bite you.
Twice that happened to us. Both times the year lease expired and tenants asked to go month to month. BOTH TIMES we had to try to rent apartments in the dead of winter. We lost months of rent because most people are smart and like to move in the warm months of the year. 😉
If you do end up going month to month and get a new tenant in the fall or winter, alter your contract to be until May or June of the following year. Then make it clear it becomes a year to year lease afterwards.
What is expected, money-wise, upfront?
Make it clear what the first payment would look like with security. We never expected more than the first month and security + any pet fees, but we’ve seen listings that required 1st, 2nd, last and security.
When we were looking for our first place, walking through a quite dumpy apartment, it was shocking being told it was over 2.5k just to get in.
If you find a responsible young couple or individual, it’s unnecessary to burden them that greatly at the start.
Are any of the utilities covered? If so, what is the tenant responsible for and what will you cover?
We covered refuse and water. Tenants were responsible for gas and electric.
At one point when we lived in the upper apartment, we also provided internet, but when we left that became something the upper and lower tenants had the option of sharing if they worked it out.
What is required to apply?
If you don’t read anything else in this article this is the #1 most important thing you SHOULD do to vet your tenants:
Before even considering a tenant, do a complete background and credit check.
We used cozy.co for anyone who wanted to even be considered for renting either of our apartments.
It saved us untold amounts of stress and trouble.
The prospective tenant pays the $30-40 fee upfront online directly to the company during the application process. Within a couple days we got a full background and credit check back.
Disclaimer:
To be clear, we never discriminated against someone with a background or credit history. We always took into consideration each individual situation and the prospective tenants side of the story. EVERYONE deserves a second chance and someone to believe in them.
That said, as a landlord, your first priority is the safety of your family, your property and the neighbors who will be living near them. If there is domestic violence in the past, any kind of violent criminal charge or extremely poor credit history, your best bet is to continue showing.
What Can Happen If You DON’T Vet Your Tenants
Once we had several young ladies in their early 20’s look at our upper apartment (950/mo) and literally beg us to rent it. They had ‘money on them right now’. We kindly referred them to the site to apply and explained we had more showings scheduled before we could make a decision.
When their checks came back, their credit scores were the lowest we had ever seen – in the low 300’s. They hadn’t made ONE on time payment on ANYTHING up to the very month they were wanting to rent.
If you don’t know it already, you should RUN from tenants like that. What makes you think they would prioritize paying YOU on time? Or at all?
Once you have a bad tenant in your apartment, (depending on your state) the law often favors them and there are time constraints on how soon you can evict. In that interim, they could potentially leave much more in damages than any security deposit could cover.
The apartment house next door to us did NOT vet their tenants. Their tenants would throw loud drinking parties into the night on weekdays and drunk male’s would urinate off their upper deck towards our house. The neighbor on the other side of us was constantly calling the cops on them.
VET YOUR TENANTS. For your sake, theirs, and all the neighbors.
What Can Happen Even If You DO Vet Your Tenants
When we finally closed on our second house (Fixer #2) and moved out, we were faced with trying to rent a 1400sq ft ($950/mo) upper apartment in November.
It didn’t go well.
We were pressured to get it rented because of the added mortgage and renovation costs on the new house, so we were more desperate to fill the vacancy.
How To Vet Prospective Tenants, Rule #1: Never go into renting your apartment feeling desperate.
The only interest we had was a mom of 4 boys (several teenagers) living with her boyfriend. She had a bankruptcy in her past, but seemed to be responsible paying her bills at the moment.
Even though our apartment was only 3 bedrooms (and not very big) she assured us they could fit fine. So we offered her the apartment.
She was on time with her rent and seemed to cooperate with anything needed.
(However our water bill TRIPLED).
At least there was good communication, or so we thought.
The Nightmare Tenant
At the very beginning, we went over every sentence in the lease together. We were very clear that there would be NO hanging anything on any walls without my husband’s approval and help.
Considering it was built in 1922, all the walls were lath and plaster and some were cracking. Hanging something improperly could cause major, expensive, time consuming damage.
And it did.
They mounted a large TV above the fireplace. The large mantle could have easily accommodated a huge TV, however they decided to put massive bolts into the plaster above the mantle and drilled into the brick.
Then when removing it to leave THEY BROKE A BOLT OFF. Just that single broken bolt took hours of labor and caused major damage to the wall and brick.
I can’t even begin to explain the damage we were left with. And the layers of grime everywhere. We had to pay for a professional cleaner out of pocket, since I had two babies and there was no way to get it done in time for the next tenants.
Ryan spent hours every night there for over a week, patching walls, scrubbing extremely sticky stuff off the kitchen floor, trying to repair the excessive wear in every room. NIGHTMARE.
When we had to take a fraction of the security deposit (we could have taken all of it) and gave her an itemized listing of everything, she threatened us with a lawsuit.
Our attorney advised us she could go fly a kite, and she did, however the whole process was a huge nightmare.
The Takeaway
VET YOUR TENANTS. That’s absolutely the most important part of this entire post.
Also:
- Don’t go into renting your apartment feeling desperate. You could end up settling for someone unsuitable for your situation.
- Use cozy.co to do background and credit checks (not sponsored). It saved us untold amounts of stress.
- Communicate with your tenants, and DO IT IN WRITING where important.
- Make sure your lease is clear, even with things you might consider ‘little’.
- Have an attorney go over your lease to make sure all your bases are covered before you use it the first time.
- Look for the good in people, but don’t fail to see the bad.
- Use discretion, trust your instincts.
- Remember your first priority is the safety of you, your family, your finances, and the neighbors of your property.
Now on to your adventure of finding and vetting the perfect tenants!
