Landlords always hope they end up with the very best candidates from the tenant pool, but even with screening you can occasionally end up with a less-than-perfect tenant. There are many tenants who can cause issues on your property, but hoarders present a specific challenge. Though they’ve been sensationalized on network reality shows, cases of… Read more »
How to Find a Handyman for Your Rental Property
When you’re going down the checklist for everything you need to have a successful rental property, a reliable handyman is pretty high on the list. As a landlord, you’ll be responsible for property maintenance. That includes emergencies that threaten the wellbeing of your tenants or might damage your property, like a 3AM water heater leak… Read more »
Tips for Landlords: Streamlining the Application Process
When you work as a landlord, you learn very quickly that a large part of your life will be dedicated to reading applications for potential tenants. Whether you’re renting out a single home or numerous apartments, you’re almost guaranteed to have more applications than open properties. If you’re not careful, the work can easily become… Read more »
Marketing a Rental on Craigslist, Zillow & Trulia
When it comes to marketing a rental property, landlords have a lot of options at their disposal. There are all the traditional avenues, like print media and radio. You can list in forums online, or create social media profiles to reach potential local tenants. However, some of the best and most underutilized marketing methods are… Read more »
Making the Landlord Life Easier
As a landlord, you have dozens of different things to keep track of. Your to-do list is probably a mile long for every property you own. There’s paperwork to fill out and file, finances to balance, maintenance to do, and tenants to find. Without help, it becomes very overwhelming very quickly. That’s why it’s important… Read more »
Selecting the Right Tenant Screening Service
Seasoned landlords and property managers know that choosing the right tenant screening service can take a ton of worry and guesswork out of renting their property out to new tenants. Doing proper background, credit, and eviction history checks can be time consuming and complicated, so many property owners choose a simpler version that only pulls… Read more »
Lightening the Landlord Workload
Anyone who’s been operating as a landlord for a while can tell you that it keeps you very busy. You have to have a strong work ethic, good common sense, good people skills, great networking connections, organizational skills, and more. You need to be able to multitask, and between screening tenants, advertizing and filling your… Read more »
Getting a Second Look for Tenant Screening
There are so many reasons why it’s a good idea for landlords to do tenant screening — checking prior rental history, criminal background checks, eviction history, and more. It all helps to paint a picture of the sort of renter you’re allowing into your property, and will guide you in making better and more lucrative decisions…. Read more »
Renting to Section 8 Tenants
Depending on your location, you may be considering renting your unit to Section 8 tenants. In some areas, you may be required to consider them. Either way, there are some important things to be aware of when accepting and reviewing Section 8 applications. First of all: what does Section 8 mean? The Section 8 Housing… Read more »
Tenant Screening for College Students
It’s that time of year again — graduation is upon us, and college students are packing up and finding off campus housing for the summer months. Some may even choose to stay off campus through the next school year. If you have units to rent in a college-accessible area, you’d be remiss not to consider… Read more »