Minimum Requirements In Order To Get Stable Tenants
If you just bought your first investment opportunity and are looking for tenants, you need to make sure that you set high minimum requirements for prospective tenants. High minimum requirements are one of the best ways to ensure that you find tenants who will respect your property.
Income
The first thing you need to do is set your income requirements. Generally, property owners require tenants to make a certain amount more than the monthly rent in order to ensure that you get paid every month and that your tenants do not miss any payments or make any late payments.
If you really want to ensure that your tenants will be able to pay their rent, require all potential tenants to provide proof that they make at least three times the amount of rent in monthly income. That way, you can be ensured that your tenants should be able to pay rent along with all their other bills and expenses every month.
You can get proof of this through pay stubs. You shouldn't take just one months worth of pay stubs as evidence – you should ask for three to six months work of pay stubs. That way, you can make sure that any potential tenant has had a stable job for an extended period of time that would allow them to meet their rent obligation.
No Evictions
There may be a small percentage of people who have been evicted because of a crazy landlord. However, most people are evicted for legitimate reasons. In order to evict someone, a landlord has to go through the courts and prove that they have a legal reason to evict a tenant. That is not something they are going to do without a valid reason.
In order to protect your properties and investments, never allow a tenant to rent from you who has an eviction. Do not make any exceptions to this rule.
Great References
Finally, make sure that any potential tenants have great references. Make sure that you call all of the tenant's references and require them to provide a way to contact all of their previous landlords.
Many landlords make the mistake of only calling the first one or two references listed and don't go through the entire list. By skipping references, you may skip the opportunity to obtain valuable information about the tenant that could affect your choice to rent to that person.
If you want to protect your new investment, make sure you set high minimum requirements for your tenants. Setting high requirements will allow you to find high quality tenants. If you need assistant with screening tenants, you can hire a property management company such as CJ Real Estate, Inc to help you out with this process and with taking care of your new rentals.