All Forum Posts by: Joey Arata

Hey, I wonder if we're related?  My husband is an Arata from California.  Anyway, welcome to the adventure of landlording!  In fact, a book you should order from Amazon is "landlording" by Leigh Robinson.  

Since you are the owner/occupant of the building, it is legal to discriminate under federal law (not sure about your state).  Of course, it's not nice to discriminate and I don't recommend it, but you don't have to worry about being falsely accused as much as other landlords do.

My best advice for tenant screening is to use the credit report to make sure they told the truth on the application about previous addresses.  You want to call previous (not current) landlords for references.  Match the landlord to the address and if they skipped one, that's a red flag.  If it's been a long time and the landlord can't remember the person, it's not a big deal.  We seem to only remember the names of the terrible ones!   I can think of at least 4 times when this has saved me from renting to a tenant who would have been a nightmare.

Enjoy your new home!

Hi Joey,

A lot of great advice provided by other Bigger Pockets members. 

Have you considered getting a property manager? Obviously they take a cut of gross rents (8-10% in my area), but having a pro manage your unit for a year could give you some peace of mind. You would see their lease and screening process from the owner's perspective and get more comfortable with the mechanics of these arrangements. 

Nice job on the duplex.

Evan

I use Cozy to screen potential tenants - they offer credit and background checks. I simply send interested parties a link directly from the site, they pay the fee, Cozy runs the reports and I get to view them.

They also process rent payments. This is initially why I started with Cozy, but have used them for tenant screening as I got more familiar with them. They link directly to the tenants checking account and deduct rent automatically on whatever date you agree upon with your tenant. I believe they just started offering to link to credit cards (insert comment on risk here.)

Also, they are super responsive! Any time I've had questions, or set something up incorrectly and needed to change it, they have responded to emails within 24 hours.

You can find them at https://cozy.co

Hi @Joey Arata,

It seems everyone has already covered most of the basics, and at the end of the day it will be up to you to learn the subtle nuances of landlording (some, unfortunately, by trial and error). That being said you should still strive to work smarter instead of harder, so I thought I could provide you with a few useful online tools to get you started in the right direction.

1) www.mapliv.com is a nifty tool that can give you a solid idea of how much money your property could bring in each month. Essentially it scrapes craigslist listings and puts them on a map of the area surrounding your property. It sorts them out based on size, price, and location in regards to your property. It is a great place to start, but should not be the sole tool used to set your rent rate because it neglects interior upgrades, size of the lot, etc. I'd recommend starting with it to get an idea, then cross checking by identifying the quality of other properties (meaning interior upgrades and proximity to transportation/shopping centers) by viewing the actual listings and pictures. Keep in mind that it is not uncommon to adjust the rent rate based on the amount of interest you receive, so don't be afraid to adjust it once the listing is posted.

2) postlets.com is a great way to blast your listing out to over a dozen different listing sites, including craigslist, trulia, zilllow, and hotpads. You make one, uniform listing and it will be on the other sites usually within 24 hours of completing it.

3) tenantify.com is a popular tenant screening service, charging only $15.00 for a background and income check. That being said there are a ton of these services online so I would recommend researching them yourself to see which fits your needs the best. When doing this check to see if they are instant services providing soft background/credit checks, or if they are providing more thorough hard checks like iscscreening.com.

4) Here is a link to the national Fair Housing Laws, which I strongly recommend familiarizing yourself with. Not knowing little details such as the illegality of discriminating against an applicant's source of income can lead to big problems down the road.

I hope these tools are as useful to you as they have been for me in the past.

Good Luck!