First time listing an apartment for rent

[Tarcizio Goncalves]

Hi BP community, 

I wanted to get some help with 5 questions I had regarding listing my apartment. 
First question:
I am listing my rental apartment for the first time. I bought the landlord forms for my state on BP and I am ready to roll. I saw that the Rhode Island LL forms come with an application. I am a little confused if I have the potential tenant fill out the application first or give me a copy of their credit history and background check first. Could someone please let me know which comes first? 

Second question:
I listed my apartment on both Cozy and Zillow. So far, I have a few candidates coming from the Zillow and not from Cozy. I know Cozy provides a service for background and credit checks. Not sure if Zillow allows the same service and if they do, I am not sure how to enable this. I was hoping I would get people coming from Cozy but that is not the case. 

Third question:
What do you all use to market your vacancies? Cozy hasnt been doing what I was hoping it would do. 

Fourth Question:
Does everyone have a tenant screening policy? I downloaded one from BP and it pretty sums up what I want in a tenant. Should I have that along with the application? 

Firth Question:
I want to make sure the tenant will have enough money to pay the rent. what percentage do you use to determine if the applicant will be able to make the rent payment? their debt cannot exceed what percentage of their income? 

Thank you all

Tarcizio

[Katie Stewart]

Hi Tarcizio,

To answer your first question: Have you potential tenant fill out the application first, then you can go through with the screening process. There is free landlord software out there that you can utilize to screen your applicants (the applicant pays the fee rather than you). Secondly, there are software options, other than Cozy and Zillow, that will perform market syndication. This means your property listing will be posted to dozens of sites like realtor.com, apartments.com, etc. with one click! 

I would definitely include a rental criteria (and/or tenant screening policy) with your application that outlines income and credit requirements as well as how you treat those with a criminal or eviction history. 

To answer your final question, I would require 3x the monthly rent. This will make sure that the rent is covered on top of any other bills the tenant may have. In addition, when you screen tenants through the free landlord software there is typically a credit score minimum recommendation.

If you need any suggestions on landlord software, please feel free to reach out to me through personal message! Hope this helps!