Tips for How to Accept and Deny Prospective Tenants
After following a thorough tenant screening process, the next step is making a decision and telling your prospective tenants. In this post, we'll go over how to decide whether to accept or reject a tenant.
Accept Prospective Tenants
You should accept a tenant if he or she:
- Is friendly and interested in your rental property
- Agrees to your screening process, including a tenant credit report and background check
- Shows up on time to your property showing
- Completes all parts of the rental application
- Verifies income with a w-2 or paystub
- Has sufficient income
- Is a stable and responsible employee
- Has a history of paying rent on time
- Has no legal history of legal action or being evicted
- Made rent payments on time with previous landlords
- Has a sufficient credit score and no serious criminal history
Let’s say you’ve found a tenant who meets the above criteria and you’re ready to accept him or her. Here are the next steps for accepting a tenant:
- Let the tenant know you’d like to rent your property to him or her.
- Let the tenant know that the next step is signing a rental lease.
- Confirm the move-in date.
- Discuss collecting first month’s rent and the deposit.
- Mention a deadline for when you expect the lease to be signed by. It’s reasonable to ask a tenant to sign a lease within 24 to 72 hours of providing the lease.
After notifying the tenant, we recommend starting to work on the rental lease right away. It’s good to accept the tenant you want first. That way, if the tenant ends up saying no, you have other applicants to accept.
Deny Prospective Tenants
It’s important that you deny tenants who might damage the property or not pay rent on time. It’s a red flag if the tenant:
- Doesn’t follow up with you
- Doesn’t agree to a credit and background check
- Acts unfriendly or disinterested
- Reports that he or she has been evicted in the past
- Leaves the rental application incomplete
- Is an unstable employee
- Falsified income or provided a fake reference
- Has a history of not paying rent on time or has legal action filed against him or her
- Has a low credit score or a serious criminal history
To deny a tenant, we recommend saying in writing, “We’re sorry, but we’ve rented the property to another applicant. Thank you.”
Fair Housing Laws
According to Fair housing Laws, you cannot deny tenants because of their:
- National origin
- Religion
- Sex
- Familial Status
- Handicap
- Marital status
- Veteran status
- Citizenship
- Sexual orientation
- Political ideology
- Gender identity
- Age
- Participation in the Section 8 Program or other subsidy programs
To avoid rental housing discrimination, we recommend having notes or documents to support why you are rejecting a tenant. For example, you could reject a tenant because of his or her credit report or rental application. Or perhaps you took notes at the property showing that an applicant was thirty minutes late.
Final Thoughts
It’s best practice to use tenant screening before deciding who will live in your rental property and to be careful how you accept or deny them.
Check out our other posts to learn more:
5 Questions to Ask In Your Rental Application
11 Tips for Analyzing Tenant Credit Reports and Background Checks
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