The rental market is projected to reach a value of $2396.61 billion this year. People that have been priced out of buying a home due to the current housing market turn to rentals instead.
As a landlord, this means you have access to a wide pool of potential tenants. However, that doesn’t mean every tenant will be a good fit. A thorough tenant screening process ensures you find responsible tenants that you can count on.
Here’s what you need to know about the tenant screening process.
The Benefits of Screening Tenants
As a landlord, one of your greatest worries is likely dealing with the eviction process. It can cost thousands of dollars to evict a tenant, plus it can lead to headaches and ruined relationships. When the occupants of your rental units don’t pay rent, that leaves you in a tight spot financially.
A tenant screening service can predict the likelihood of a bad outcome on a lease. Tenant screening looks at factors and data such as payment history, credit history, inquiries, and more to determine if this renter might pose a risk.
Tenant screenings look into an applicant’s credit history, criminal records, and look for past eviction reports.
Another benefit of tenant screening is that it saves you time. You won’t have to take time out of your schedule to show the unit to anyone that doesn’t meet the necessary requirements for the rental.
How the Tenant Screening Process Works
The tenant screening process starts with a pre-screening, which filters out applicants that won’t be a good match. A pre-screening process eliminates applicants that don’t meet the requirements of the rental arrangement. For instance, they might not bring in a high enough income, or they might have pets.
Becoming a landlord involves learning about and abiding by state and federal regulations that deal with tenants and applicants. You have to remain compliant with all laws.
When you screen tenants, the easiest way to stay compliant is to use tenant screening services. You can learn more about an online background check at srv1st.com. You can learn whether a prospective applicant will likely pay rent on time, whether you have to worry about the safety of yourself or your tenants, and if they are a good fit for the rental.
Using online tenant screening services makes the entire process easier, and it takes far less time. You can check their full credit history, criminal background, and eviction records.
After the screening process, you can review rental applications. At this point, you’ve filtered out all the bad matches, and you have a few tenants that would be a good fit for your property. You can take the information you’ve gathered in the screening and ask more questions, conduct an interview and showing, and verify income.
Make the Tenant Screening Process Easy
Any landlord will benefit from conducting a thorough background check on an applicant. You can make the tenant screening process easier by using services and software designed to match you with the highest-quality tenants.
As a landlord, you should never stop learning. Discover other ways to maximize your profits and take good care of your property by reading some of our other blog posts.
