How to get prospective tenants to commit to viewing the property?

[Dominique Palmer]

Wondering how other land lords approach this. My partners and I have been stood up a few times when appointments were scheduled to view a unit. We could do an open house type viewing maybe one or two days out of the week and after viewing the tenants that are serious can pay an application fee and then move forward with renting the unit.

Does anybody do it another way? Like maybe having prospects fill out an app and paying the fee even before they let the prospect physically view the unit.