Rental Property Investor · Yuma, AZ · Member since 2019 · 637 posts · 46 votes
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
Rental Property Investor · Cincinnati, OH · Member since 2020 · 869 posts · 823 votes
6y
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.
Property Manager · Katy, TX · Member since 2015 · 1k+ posts · 1k+ votes
6y
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.
Real Estate Agent · Dallas, TX · Member since 2020 · 28 posts · 28 votes
6y
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.