As a landlord, you would always want the best tenants. You would want the rent to be paid on time, you will want peaceful tenants who don’t cause damage to your property, who would abide by the terms of the lease agreement, not engage in any illegal or unsocial activity on your premises and you wouldn’t want any unpleasant developments where you get sued or have to deal with forced evictions. As much as a landlord may need to evict an unbearable or unacceptable tenant, eviction is not always an easy proposition. The cycle of getting new tenants, dealing with a vacant property and hence loss of revenue are not very pleasant experiences for a landlord.
Here are some great questions to use to screen your potential tenants.
• Obtain every shareable detail of the tenant pertaining to his or her financial profile. Where does the tenant work, how long has he or she been working for the same company or on the same business, how much does he or she earn and you should ask for references at their workplace, ideally a manager or the owner of the company. It is, however, important to stay away from personal financial information that no one will share. But income, term and nature of employment, reference and such non-invasive details are always necessary.
• Get the contact details of the previous landlord and contact them to find out more about the tenant. Find out if they were evicted, if they had a tussle and if the tenant was at fault, know more about the kind of tenant he or she was at the previous address and any other information that is relevant. Background checks are very important.
• Be very clear about how many occupants you would allow in the house or apartment, be lucid with subletting rules. Make these amply clear before you get the prospective tenant to sign on the dotted line.
• If there are special policies you have for your tenants; you should not only have them in the terms of your lease agreement but also communicate them verbally. This is just to avoid a scenario when your tenant comes back feigning ignorance of such policies. Not everyone reads the fine print of the agreement.
