The Importance of Prescreening Tenants

Whether you have a property manager or you are managing your rental units yourself, it is critical that all of your prospective tenants are adequately prescreened. The amount of money you will save in the long run by doing due diligence ahead of time is well worth the extra effort and time spent upfront.

Most of us have been burned occasionally by bad tenants who don’t pay rent on time, bounce checks to us, and ultimately have to be evicted. While prescreening doesn’t guarantee that you won’t have to evict a tenant, it does make it much less likely.

Even if you have to wait a few weeks longer to get your house rented in order to find qualified tenants – make the sacrifice! It’s easy to be tempted to take the first person willing to pay the rent that you’re asking for, but this is a mistake. They need to qualify to occupy your property.

Every city is a little bit different in terms of the time it takes to file the paperwork for eviction, get a court date, and finally, if necessary, get the sheriff to remove the non-paying tenant. But – one thing is for sure: it takes time, usually weeks, sometimes months, to get the matter fully resolved.

And, of course, the type of tenant who stops paying you rent, usually doesn’t leave your property in the best condition when you finally succeed in evicting them. You may be stuck with thousands of dollars in repair costs, which of course means that your property will be un-rentable for longer, further adding to your losses.

So, when you add up the lawyer fees, court costs, months of lost rent, repairs, and personal stress - taking a little extra time and care to get your property rented to a fully qualified tenant is a no-brainer. Only rent to fully qualified, prescreened tenants!

Until my next post,

James