Tenant Screening for student housing

[Bob Willis]

My wife and I are in the process of closing on a house that will be lived in by our son while attending college. It is a 4 BR, 2BA. We plan on trying to find some other students to live with him while there. He will act as our eyes and ears of course. We currently own five rentals and have a solid tenant screening process, but this specific situation is new to me. I'm just wondering do we set aside the credit score and income requirements since these are students? We are only listing the property through the university, so there will be no non-students applying. Do we run the credit score and income through the parents and make them sign the lease? Curious about if anyone has any history with a situation similar to this.

Thanks

[Ashley Herring]

I agree with @Dave Poeppelmeier. We used co-signers most of the time and the parents were happy to help. I preferred it when the parents were there to help with the move in process as I had the opportunity to meet with them and build a relationship with them. There have been situations where the tenant destroyed a rental and I got on the phone with the co-signor and worked out a payment plan to reimburse the owner for damages. As long as throughout the rental process I was communicative (as I should be), and continued to work on the relationship, the co-signer would be very cooperative upon move out and not blame the PM company for XYZ issues that "caused their son/daughter to XYZ the property." (Yes, that has also happened.) Good luck!