Collecting rent/income checks for college students

[Christopher Giannino]

I am interested in renting to college students and was wondering what others do to ensure that their tenants pay their rent? I know many landlords do income checks on potential tenants but I would suspect that many college students don't make enough to feel comfortable. Also, what are ways to collect rent other then asking them to mail you their check? Any advice would be very helpful. Thanks Chris

[Roy N.]

@Christopher Giannino

We have several student tenants. We still take an application fee and perform regular screening (credit/background/reference/employment checks) but our expectations are most will have little to no credit history. In that case we require a guarantor (usually a parent, grandparent, older sibling) and screen the guarantor as we would a tenant.

We execute a separate guarantee with each guarantor which are attached as Schedules to the lease, rather than have the guarantor sign the lease as a co-tenant. This is principally due to the fact we have a standard lease {courtesy of the Rentalsman} which does not provide for guarantors within the lease.

Whenever we have an issue with behaviour or payment, we usually only need to mention that we will be calling Mom and things get straightened out. Once we actually had to call Mom and she was sufficiently embarrassed by junior that she started paying his rent directly to us.