Teaching Landlords to Find Their Quality Tenant!

    Preparing Yourself For Selecting Tenants

by Don Conrad

When landlords think of the preparation that is needed to find a tenant for their rental dwelling, they usually think in terms of cleaning and painting the property or writing an ad that brings tenant prospects by the truckload. Although both of these factors do require preparation (and I do cover those items in my book How to Find That Quality Tenant. You can check it out on my website at http://www.findthatqualitytenant.com), there are other things to do to prepare for a tenant search.
 
Finding and choosing a quality tenant for your rental dwelling requires work. It is going to take time and play havoc with your emotions. You will be misled, frustrated, ticked off, and discouraged, among other things. You may want to quit and you may question your sanity, or at the very least, your desire to be a landlord. All this is normal. All this comes with the territory, so it’s important to prepare yourself first
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With good preparation and understanding of what lies ahead, you will be able to adjust and cope with any negatives that creep in. Proper preparation will give you a boost of self-confidence, a better attitude, and a more professional air as you search for that quality tenant
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How do you prepare yourself? For starters, realize why you are searching for a quality tenant and not just any tenant. The difference between the two can be the determining factor between success and failure in this business. To better understand that difference, let’s first define “quality tenant”.

A “quality tenant” can be best defined as someone who pays their rent on time or very close to on time. They don’t call with pesky, minute problems. They don’t call to complain about a slight noise or other trivial matters. They don’t call just to chat. They do call to tell you when they see a problem that could cost you money now or cause a real problem in the future (for instance, a plumbing or roof leak or the initial signs of other property deterioration). They are communicative, but they are not whiners. They follow the house rules, stay on the right side of the law, and don’t disturb the neighbors. They may not live the way you want them to live as far as their personal lifestyle goes, but they make you money with very minimal effort. To me, that is a quality tenant. And it is these tenants who make landlording a fulfilling and enjoyable vocation.
 
On the other hand, a tenant who fails to fit these ideals will cause you varying degrees of grief, headaches, and sleepless nights because their problems somehow become your problems. Inferior tenants waste your time, elevate your blood pressure, and make you dislike the business. They destroy your property and cause unnecessary turnover by skipping out in the night. They are prone to evictions and judgments and in general will cost you money every time you turn around. Most of these tenants come from the “any tenant” category.

            Finding a quality tenant will make all the difference in the world and you need to be prepared to continue your search until you find them. Uncovering such a tenant will take extra time and extra effort. Unfortunately, all this time and effort will happen in the beginning of this journey, at a time your rental property is empty and costing you money each and every day. This is a disheartening time in your landlording career and you may be tempted to rent to any breathing body. Don’t. Prepare yourself to be strong during this time and stick to your goal. Commit yourself to giving extra time and effort now, in the beginning of your search because the stress and anxiety you feel at this point will only be a small fraction of the stress and anxiety you will experience with a problem tenant living in your rental dwelling, and that stress will gnaw at you twenty-four/seven. Also keep in mind that the hours used to deal with those problem tenants will equal ten or twenty times the amount you would have spent to find a quality tenant in the first place.
 
The next area in which to prepare yourself is the understanding of the social and economic standings from where quality tenants can come. Contrary to popular belief, it does not matter what the income level is of the people to whom you rent. There are quality tenants in all income brackets. I should know, I have quality tenants in all income brackets.

Next, you should prepare yourself for understanding the average tenant mentality. Many tenants have never been a homeowner and never will be. Others are just leaving the nest and have no clue as to what is required to be responsible for a home. And a few believe that the tenant way of thinking is the only true way of thinking, making landlord/tenant communication difficult. Whichever of these mentalities crosses your path, you want to be ready. If you can learn a little about how a tenant’s mind works, you’ll be better prepared to find quality tenants in addition to solving or avoiding tenant problems that come your way.

To better understand a tenant’s mentality, be willing to step into the shoes of your tenant periodically and try to understand their perspective. I would advise trying to do this at least once in each step of the tenant selection process. If you are finding this difficult, take yourself back in time to when you first rented a place of your own. Do you remember how you felt about that rental property? Did you take care of it like you owned it? What did you think of the manager or landlord? What did you dislike about him or her? Were you treated fairly and professionally?

If you remember the true answers to these questions, you may realize that your current view of rental properties and landlords is far different from back then. When you were a tenant, you may not have cared if things got damaged. You likely didn’t realize the cost of repairs back then, and besides, wouldn’t your security deposit cover it? How about rent? I’m sure you assumed your landlord was rich so sending it a few days late wasn’t a big issue. That statement is probably not totally true, but it is how many tenants perceive their landlords.
 
Now that I have you thinking, I’ll let you in on a little secret: Tenants haven’t changed. Your personal scenario from tenant to homeowner to landlord may have changed, but the tenant mentality of today is almost identical to the tenant mentality ten or twenty years ago.

This doesn’t mean most tenant are bad, it just means they think differently than you. They think they understand you. But they don’t. How could they? They have never walked in your shoes. They don’t have the experience dealing with the things a landlord deals with. Don’t hold this against them. Just keep in mind how they think—how they view renting and how they may act as renters. If nothing else, commit this thought to memory: Most landlords have been a tenant, but most tenants have never been a landlord. Use this knowledge accordingly. Approach tenant selection as a live game of chess. You want to analyze both playing fields, even though you only represent one side of the board. courtesy of www.findthatqualitytenant.com

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If you would like further infomation on this topic, please purchase my book "How to Find That Quality Tenant". Ask your locale bookstore or see my website at:www.findthatqualitytenant.com

I am not a lawyer, therefore, if you have any legal concerns with anything in this article, please contact the appropriate legal counsel.

The above article may be reproduced without my permission under the following conditions: author name, website, and contact information must accompany article and be prominently displayed, and the article must be reproduced in it's entirety.

Thank You. Don Conrad

Copyright 2006 Blue Collar Publishers
www.findthatqualitytenant.com
e-mail: donconrad@findthatqualitytenant.com
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