Pre-screening tenants to Scheduling a showing

[Dale Lotts]

Hi Everyone! I have several units and I work full time, so I work hard to automate my rental business as much as possible. So far so good! Tenant screening is working great once the tenant moves in! Three evictions in 17 years, rent collection is automatic via ACH, maintenance is always preventive so late night or emergency calls from tenants, etc. I have recently changed to having only one group showing a few weeks after the current tenant gives notice that they are moving out. Now I find myself spending a lot of time screening tenants for the showing ( no need to invite someone that won't qualify to rent when they apply) This pre-screening takes at least 20 minutes per tenant- if I get 10-20 calls it takes much too long to screen all of these prospective tenants. My goal is to have exactly one showing with 4-5 prospective tenants that are highly likely to qualify if they apply - in my experience, of those that look at the property, at least 2-3!will apply. Am I going about this completely wrong? Does anyone have a better way to pre-screen prospective tenants? Any other advice on this will be welcome!

[Steve Vaughan]

In my CL ads, I have 5 questions at the bottom. No phone number until we are much further in the process. This works well for me in a hot market.

How many people? How many animals? Is this far from your work? How soon would you like to move? Does anyone smoke?

I can quickly screen replies and reply via anonymous e-mail as needed.  Processing a bunch of apps is time consuming and risky.

Prevents the obvious avoids or the perfect ones that can't move for 5 months.  Hope this helps!