According to Judy Stevens of Skogman Realty, the most important document for running your rental business smoothly is the rental application. Judy, a landlord for 48 years has seen it all. She says that Landlords can eliminate more problems with a good rental application than you can with anything else, including your lease or rules and regulations.
Good rental applications include:
Name – Along with their legal name, ask for aliases or other names they have used. Make sure that all non-related parties who will be living at the premise, fill out an application too.
Birth Date – You don’t necessarily need the year unless you suspect that the person is under 18 years old. If your applicant has a common name, Jane Smith, for instance, you will need the birth date to determine if you are looking at the correct person’s information.
Present address and landlord contact info-Where are they living now? Check out who actually owns the property. First of all, to make sure that it is a valid address and to see if the property owner is a relative of the applicant.
Previous addresses and landlord contact info – Go back 5 to 8 years.
Current employer – Call the employer to confirm their employment.
Income – Some employers will confirm this information and some will not. Wondering how much they need to make to afford your property? A common rule of thumb is two and a half times what the rent is.
Other sources of income – This could be anything from child support to Social Security payments.
Vehicle – What type of vehicle they drive and how many will be on the property. I like to get their license plate too.
Emergency contact – If your tenant passes away or disappears you will need to know who to contact. This question can sometimes tell you a lot about the applicant. If for instance, the applicant says, “Will you contact my Mom if I have a loud party?”, you may want to pass on that person.
Who will occupy the property? This gives you recourse if they move in extra people who are not on the lease.
Have you ever been evicted or asked to move? To check their answer, go to your state’s online court records. There will be a record of evictions. Of course, if you find that they have lied, you probably should think twice about renting to them.
Have you ever been convicted of a felony or misdemeanor? Again, check this out on your state’s online court records.
Have you ever committed a crime that would put you on the sex offender’s list? This is a felony.
Are you currently using or ever been convicted of using a controlled substance? This is an important question because in many states, if a property owner knowingly rents to tenants that are drug users, your property can be confiscated. This question serves as an indication that you have tried to screen out this type of tenant and looks good in court.
Have you ever broken a rental agreement? If yes, please explain.
Do you give permission to do a credit check, criminal background check and to verify the information that you have provided in this document? This question alone will weed out many undesirable tenants. Have them sign and date the application.
At the bottom of the application be sure to include the following: Any falsification on this application will result in the termination of your lease.
Get a copy of the applicant’s drivers license or passport to verify that they are who they say they are. Identity theft does happen.
You have their application, now what?
First, check the address that they have provided to make sure someone lives there and determine who the property belongs to. Many landlords will ask you to email or fax signed permission from the tenant, before they will give you any information. If you have included the permission question in your application, you can send that.
What should you ask former landlords?
The first thing you should ask a former landlord when you are screening is, “How are you related to this person?” Sometimes it’s a very good way to get to the truth. Did they pay their rent on time and give you adequate notice? Did they receive their whole deposit back? A question you should always ask a former landlord is, “Would you rent to them again?” This may bring out issues that you hadn’t thought to ask about.
Run the credit check and credit score. The higher the credit score the better. If they have a history of paying their bills on time, they will probably pay their rent on time too.
Check their criminal history. If they have a criminal history, it is up to you to decide what kind of criminal history, if any, you will allow in your property.
The bottom line is that every landlord needs to have a good application and needs to use it. It is important to use the same screening criteria for everyone and to observe fair housing laws.
Note: The information in the article is not legal advice. Every state has different laws and every rental situation is different.
