Do tenants have to fill out a tenant application?

Question

Do tenants have to fill out a tenant application?  I know the answer, but, do they have to do that after looking at the property or is it BEFORE looking at the property? Thanks

Cameron Tope · Answer

Fili,

We provide our prospective tenants the qualifications upfront, then show them the property. If they like it, then they fill out an application online.

Our application fee is $55 and most folks are not going to pay an application fee before they see the property.

Does that make sense?

Dave Spooner · Answer

Hi Account Closed, a tenant almost always fills out an application after looking at the property, and not before. Any situation where a tenant is required to fill out an application beforehand, especially if they also have to pay the application fee beforehand, sounds like a red flag to me. Not to mention, most tenants will not be willing to do that, and many will be suspicious as to why they need to pay an application fee for a property they haven't seen yet.

David Krebsbach · Answer

Re: Rental application expenses... not only is there an out-of-pocket expense to run online credit history, criminal background, and rental history checks, but many times there is additional time/effort in manually verifying information. If a tenant is changing jobs or moving from another area, their "history" is about to change, so employment might need to be verified manually, or there might be gaps in time between living addresses and/or jobs, etc. These details consume time to chase down. Sometime history doesn't match information on the application. CHECK THINGS OUT. And, yes, the app fee also weeds out the tire-kickers - you really don't want to process an app when the prospective tenant has applied at several properties and you might be wasting your time.

Cameron Tope · Answer

Fili,

We charge an application fee for many reasons, the most important being - we have costs to run a credit & background check and the fee weens out the tire-kickers.

We keep the fee but make virtually no money due to our costs to process and the costs of the credit and background checks.

Hope that helps!

Account Closed · Answer

@David Krebsbach thank you, do you know where I can find all that information about the tenant?

Account Closed · Answer

@Cameron Tope thanks

Account Closed · Answer

@Cameron Tope yes, it makes sense, thank you.   Why do you charge an application fee? What is it needed for? Do you keep that?

Account Closed · Answer

@Dave Spooner makes sense!

Do tenants have to fill out a tenant application?

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