How to Recognize the Perfect Tenant
We as a landlords prefer to have a tenant who is responsible, follows all regulations and terms mentioned in the contract, pays the rent on time, maintains the property in good condition etc. However, life is rarely that perfect, so in most cases we have to make certain compromises. Otherwise, if we keep looking for the "chosen one", we might end up with an empty rental property for a long time.
I have a condo in my home town, which I rented recently and I am quite familiar with the tenant screening process. Unfortunately, I don't live in my home town anymore and a few days ago the roles were switched and it was me who had to leave good first impression. Me and my finance were looking for a place to live and had to switch the roles. I used some of my experience as a landlord to have better chances to be chosen for the house we checked. Being a landlord I know very well what I am looking for in a potential tenant and tried to use this information in my advantage.
So, let me tell you the story of our hunt for a rental property. On the very first day we checked 7 different places and to be honest most of them sucked. All in all we applied only for one of them and we were quite lucky on the next day to find out that our application was approved. So, I thought what was the key to our success? The first impression definitely matters when you are about to rent a property. Each time we had an appointment to look a property, me and my girlfriend did our best to arrive on time and to look strictly professional. I know this sounds too obvious, but I personally know a lot of people who don't do it and later are wondering what went wrong.
I am pretty sure the lessor picked us mainly because of our employment. Both me and my girlfriend have very stable and well paid jobs, so this probably made the landlord think that there will be no problems with payments, that we are people with serious intentions and so on. His wife even mentioned that will be really glad to have a marketing specialist and a doctor as their new lessees. Of course, not anyone could work a prestigious and well paid job, but the reality for good or not is that the better you job is, the greater the chances are to be approved for the accommodation.
References are also very important and could get you more points. In our case it was a friend of mine, so I was sure he will remember only the good moments of our stay there. I remember one episode when we were about to leave, but didn't have too much time for cleaning procedures. My girlfriend called end of lease in Melbourne cleaning specialists and they cleaned the property to perfection. My friend was really impressed with the results and definitely he remained with positive attitude from our business relationship.
Landlords keep in mind several factors when choosing the right tenant for their property, but the most important ones are financial stability and the references from the previous landlords.
