Tenant Screening without Agent

[NA Gav]

Hi all,

I have a condo in a high rise building in Chicago where the current tenants are moving out. For the prior lease I used an agent. This time I am using Zillow to reduce on agent commissions. I have 1 interested person in the rental (lives in a smaller apartment in the same building and looking to move into a bigger apartment).

She is single, has a 800+ credit score and is a lawyer at a big Fortune 500 company. Since I am screening tenants all through Zillow had a couple of questions for this community (would be great to get insights from folks who have done this many times) -

1. Is it fine for me to directly call her current landlord (she provided the contact #) and ask for rent payments on time and if there were any issues (without letting the applicant know)?

2. Should I confirm the validity of the paystub by calling her employer / supervisor? Is that standard or will it be viewed poorly by her?

3. Since she is a lawyer - anything to check on ? I am not a lawyer and relocated to Texas so dont want have to deal with unnecessary legal stuff. The building is well maintained with new appliances and AC purchased in last 2-3 years.

4. Lease agreement - Should I use Zillow itself for creating the lease agreement? Any advice on it would be great.

[John Warren]

@NA Gav you can definitely call her current landlord and ask some basic, open-ended questions. I like to use questions that provide space for the person to speak so you can identify if they are really the landlord. 

I would also call the employer as well. You 100% want to know if this person is employed there. With this being a law firm, you might call and ask if your potential tenant is in... sometimes I just call and ask that, and if they say something that confirms the person works there I can hang up. 

This tenant being a lawyer doesn't really mean you do anything differently. You should be treating everyone the same, and you should be using the CAR lease if this is in Chicago.