Advice for attracting quality tenants

[Stephen Dunn]

Hello world,

This is my first post on Bigger Pockets.  I have recently been introduced to the Bigger Pockets world, and I am fascinated by the community that has been built! I work for a relatively new property management company (and I am pretty green in the industry myself).  We are having trouble finding quality tenants for a 20-unit complex we manage.  While the unit is lower income, I'm interested in seeing if there are any insights into how other people tackle the problem of finding qualified tenants. While we have standard fees typical of a PM company for tenant turnover, we align with the property owner's goals of having quality tenants with a low turnover rate.  Therefore, we do reject most of our applicants. For reference, we post on Zillow and Facebook marketplace. I appreciate any advice! 

[Jill F.]

I managed basic 1 bedroom apartments in a "D" neighborhood in Akron for 6 years. We were able to find quality tenants. However, by quality tenants, I don't mean tenants that paid on time every month, I mean tenants that notified me in advance when they would have a problem paying and always completed their payment plans and did not fall more than 45 days behind. We ended up fully collected for the duration of the eviction moratorium and I never had to do an eviction in the properties. We did the following things

1) Incentivize the behaviors you want: I didn't charge late fees if tenants notified me and stuck with an acceptable payment plan.

2) Be fair-- don't charge tenants when old crufty end of useful life fixtures or finishes have to be replaced.

3) Appreciate it and fix things when tenants properly report problems.

4) Renovate as required to get the kitchens and baths actually clean, clean.

5) Make your apartments look better than others (and show that you care about your properties) by adding at least a couple of special touches like modern lighting, invisible cabinet hinges and/or cabinet paint and a subway tile backsplash (Lowes sells 3x6 white tile for .15 / tile) and a restaurant style sprayer faucet. Add coat hooks by the door. When you show your apartments focus on selling the apartment. Most people like to be sold to not judged while looking for apartments-- But still observe behaviors like timeliness, politeness, appreciation, or rudeness, and entitlement.

6) use the credit report to check for undisclosed previous addresses and debt load -- don't worry so much about credit score.

7) Search for unacceptable social media postings.

I would consider applicants with one eviction but not two and I would call previous landlords and listen to what they had to say about the tenant. The most important thing is a good work history. A MINIMUM of 1 year and current or previous job more is better.