Building a rental apartment to its completion is a dream come true to many people. Not only does it give you a sense of accomplishment, but it is also a great investment. Being a landlord, however, is not as easy as you may think. There are a lot of considerations that you need to put in place to ensure that your property is flourishing. One of the most important things that you need to think about is how you can get the right tenant for your property. Keep in mind that the tenant you get can make or break your whole landlord experience. Of course, you want a tenant who takes good care of your apartment, pays the rent on time and respects all the apartment rules, but how so? Below are a few tips that will help you find the right tenant.
- Come up with the rental requirements
The only way the tenant will be able to comply with the rules from the word go is if there will be governing rules of the premises. As such, sit down with your management team and come up with a criteria that you would like your tenants to follow. You can focus on areas such as how much should the rental amount be, if pets are allowed, are tenants allowed to hold parties, service charges, and so on.
- Advertise
The only way people will get to know that you are renting out your property is through advertising. You can do this using word of mouth or other advertising channels. Living in a digital world today, online advertising seems to have taken the lead. And the good thing is that most of the online advertising is cost-effective and reaches a larger audience. Ensure that you take clear photos of the apartment and post them on your page to give the potential tenant an idea of how the house looks. Additionally, you can go an extra mile and record a video of the house and post it on your page.
- Do some tenant screening
After good advertising, you will get people interested in your property. However, not all of them are fit to be good tenants, and for this reason, you want to do some tenant screening. What is tenant screening? This is basically trying to find out more about the potential tenant in terms of their credit score, criminal record, and income insights, to mention a few. This process might prove to be hectic, but the good thing is that you can outsource the tenant screening services from a reputable company. After a thorough background check, the company should give you a full report, including the tenant credit report that you can review to gauge if a given tenant is fit to stay in your rentals or not.
- Follow your gut feeling
Sometimes you might find that a tenant has an incredible tenant screening report but is still not the right one. Be sure to hold a one on one meeting with your tenant before letting them in. At this point, you will get to find out more about the tenant beyond the paper reports. Follow your gut feeling at all times!