Critique my tenant screening process.
After 6 years of hiring a property manager I am in the process of bringing my 26 single family rentals into "in house" management which is going to be me until I hire someone to work part time. I am using Tenantcloud to market/screen/manage/rent. After renting 6 properties, here is what I have been doing...
My minimum rental criteria that I post in the description is 3x rent, no evictions, 550 minimum credit score - though I am thinking of getting rid of minimum credit score because I have had applicants with 50K in the bank and a 500 credit score. I feel income and cash reserves should make credit score irrelevant in certain situations?
As people email me to schedule showings - I reply with this email -
Thank you for your interest in this property –
Can you please reply to the pre-qualification questions below. If all looks good we can schedule a showing any day.
- 1.What is the combined annual income (all applicants) that can be verified?
- 2.What is your approximate credit score?
- 3.When are you looking to move in?
If they appear qualified I let them schedule a showing any day. Here is the lazy part on me that I plan to hire out some day because I assume its not great practice. After they schedule a showing I ask them to text my phone an hour before to confirm. Then when they text to confirm I tell them "I am running late and the lock box is on the back door text me when you lock up and let me know if you have follow up questions."
This has been working very well but I am starting to create a training manual for the person I end up hiring so I am trying to fine tune everything.
My goal is to hire someone hourly like a virtual assistant to do administrative work like posting/invoicing water.sewer bills and lease renewals. Tenantcloud does all the invoicing and rent collections so there wont be much else. The only other thing I need to hire out is someone to do the tenant screening so that all I have to do is get the "new application received" message on TenantCloud and not deal with all the emails and showings.
Please let me know where I can improve.