Rental Property Investor · Houston, TX · Member since 2019 · 141 posts · 48 votes
I am new to rental investing.Currently listed my 1st rental Property on zillow and i am getting a ton of showing request.I donot want all these people to walk through the property due to current Omicron/Covid 19 surge in my city.How can i limit it.Should i ask all these intrested candidates to submit a rental application and screen the applications so i can pick the most favorable ones to come a do a walk through??
@Jeyo Punnakottil you are going to ask everyone to pay $30-50 for a chance to view your house, with no guarantee that a qualified applicant will be selected? Sounds great for you, but you only have one house to rent. That means if 5 of the 7 people are qualified, four of them paid money and will have no chance to rent your property. You could lose good applicants over this policy.
Do pre-screening to limit your showings. We ask four simple questions:
1. Is your income over 3X rent?
2. Do you have any animals, if so describe breed, weight and age?
3. Is your credit score above minimum approval score of 680?
4. When are you looking to take occupancy? (property is available X date)
You are asking the person to self certify income and credit score. Both of these will be verified when they actually apply, so if someone lies or makes a mistake, you can still reject them later. Move in date is critical because I have found people are often looking to move sooner than my property is available. No point in showing to them. Some people ask more questions, but I feel it is comes off too aggressive to give them too many questions.
Another option is stack your appointments in an open house fashion, so they are all coming in the same 1-2 hour window. Have your wife take the kids out of the house. You could also do Zoom. I personally like one on one showings, because it gives me a chance to have a conversation with them. You can find out other information like why they are moving, who will be living there, etc.
I have a listing right now. We have had several inquiries but now showing after 2 weeks. I have two highly qualified prospects looking at it this week. I am confident one will rent it. You don't want more showings, you want higher qualified people and less showings.
It can be overwhelming with a ton of interest, but let me just say-- 90% of those people won't show up to the house if you do an open house. You will create a TON of extra work for yourself by doing the applications ahead of time, and then doing individual showings... omg what a nightmare, call me lazy.. but this is what I do. I love copy paste-- it saves soooo much time, and you don't have to worry about a good person feeling left out if they weren't as aggressive.
1) Write a basic email that says what my requirements are, pet policy, date of preferred move in, and I tell them when the showing will be, normally Saturday 2-3PM. Copy and paste this to EVERYONE.
2) The night before the showing, I send another basic email out--- saying "Just a reminder, the showing will be 2-3PM. We've had a lot of interest and will only select from those who we meet in person, and meet all our basic requirements."-- Copy and paste to EVERYONE.
3) At the showing-- I give everyone a 1 pg flyer, stating again the requirements/what's included/how to apply-- and also ask them to email me their 2 most recent pay stubs why they think they are the best fit. I walk through, if a lot of people are there it will be a group of 2-3, and always stay 6ft apart and wear a mask. The effort tells you everything-- do they do it quickly? Are they good at communicating?
I might have a house with 300 inquiries, but it all boils down to-- who shows up, and who follows up. Normally I can narrow it down to only the top 3-5 options after the showing. I screen like no one-- and I only screen if the person is a serious contender. We've done this probably 30-40x in the past few years, only way to self manage, especially if you do this with a lot of houses!
This way you only screen the people who you meet, and you can tell a lot about the person how they present themselves.
Facebook marketplace works wonders for me, simply for the fact that I can stalk their Facebook page prior to even responding. I can weed out 90% of interested people based on how they portray themselves. This helps when your getting 100-120 messages over 24 hours.