The Biggest Tenant Screening Mistake And What It Will Cost You

All house owners would love to have tenants that will not give them any problem. No landlord would want to have someone that will end up getting an eviction notice. This life is full of tension as people experience stress in different aspects. Adding more issues with tenants is one thing no one would want to consider.

One of the problems of a troublesome tenant is that they usually cause an issue of cash flow. This effect can be disturbing because as we all know, property owners also have needs to cater for and family to look after. Troublesome tenants always give the house owner concerns by consuming his time and draining his energy. In order not to have any of these issues, it is better if the landlord does not accommodate these tenants at all than having to deal with their problems.

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We often listen to these terrifying reports on news channels, internet and from other people but that is incomparable to experiencing them ourselves. Many of the stories are true and not tales. It is quite unbelievable to experience the extent that some troublesome people would go to, to convince unsuspecting house owners to rent their homes to them. I will be telling you a true story so that you could learn a thing or two and save yourself from stress that is avoidable.

They seemed to be superb candidates

I thought I was about to hit the jackpot after speaking with the mother of a family and my potential tenant. She called to enquire about renting a property and the challenges that previous tenants had in the house. I used the opportunity to carefully and critically examine her if she is fit for the property. I request candidates to produce a prove of decent rental record in addition to three times net monthly income, excellent report from former landlords and time verification on their job.

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The family – consisting of diligent father, a mother who works from home, newborn daughter and a grandmother, walk through the property and utterly adored it. This is as expected because the house is quite beautiful. Consequently, they decided on moving forward and talk about terms and legalities. Be that as it may, here is the place things begin to get extremely pretty interesting.

The contact details of their current landlord and the address of the present home is on the application. I checked the form over and following my research, I realised that they were evicted from their current home. After discovering this, I talked to the family, and they claimed that it was merely an error and I put my worries to bed. They further contended that the landlord could attest to the claim that they are decent tenants. I decided to put a call through to the landlord which I later discovered that a member of their family was at the other call pretending to be the landlord.

More than Face value Reference is Needed

The family member posing as the landlord claimed that they are good tenants and would love to rent his property to them over again if such chance presents itself. More than simple expression is needed for significant cases such as eviction. I decided to investigate further and carefully checked the public tax record. On it, I got the real name of the house owner together with his actual address.

I followed the action up with a call. I had a conversation with the true landlord, and we talked about the family. He gave a negative review about them, claiming that they were evicted from his property and are desperately looking for a place to stay because of concern about not having a home. After hearing this, I did what any sane person would do. Well, I believe you know what I did. I did not approve them.

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Seriously, the whole scenario was very stressful and mentally draining. The purpose of my story is to let people know that what we listen to every day do happens for real. You should do the necessary investigation before renting out your properties to people because there are bad people out there. House owners should be careful and take the essential steps in investigating potential tenants so as not to make costly mistakes.