I also check out where they were living before by going by the address and checking it out and I talk to their previous land lord. I want to see how they have been treating the place where they were living before. If it looks like a pig pen or if they have multiple animals, this is not someone I want in my unit. If they don’t give me this information on the rental application, I won’t even consider them to rent my unit. I know some of this is just common sense but it bears discussion. If a tenant makes it through my rigorous screening process, I also have them pay first month’s rent, last month’s rent and the security deposit either by cash, cashiers check or by money order. I do not accept personal checks for the move-in amounts.
During the following months I will accept personal checks from them for the rent, but only until such time as they write us a bad check. The first time a check bounces for insufficient funds or any other reason, they must make it good immediately or I will immediately begin the eviction process. Once they bounce a check to me once, from that point on I will only accept money orders or cashiers checks for the rent. This is all covered in the lease they have signed. I also make sure that the person I have putting tenants in units for me thoroughly covers all the items in the lease with them before they sign it.
If a tenant does get their rent to us late, they are responsible for additional rental fees of one percent per day. These fees are in our lease as additional rental fees as opposed to late fees since some courts won’t allow you to get a judgment for late fees. Within the body of our lease we also require our tenants to have renters insurance and I want to see proof of the policy before they move in. This way I can’t be held liable for any injuries or the loss of their possessions due to an accident, fire, hurricane or any other natural disaster.
Additionally, once my tenants sign a lease with me, I will not give them keys until I see proof of utilities in their name for the unit. In certain counties like ours, the land lord can’t turn off utilities in their own name. The only way the name changes on the utilities is with a new lease. This rule may be different where you live, but a lot of the time if the tenant doesn’t pay their utilities it falls back to the land lord. This is just one way for you to protect yourself.
I will be covering more ways for you to successfully manage properties in part three of this article, or for more information on successful land lording, check out my website at marketingmagiclady.com.