Tenant Review

[Julie E.]

Hello! My husband and I have a duplex that we rent out. We are currently renting 1/2 of it and re-doing the other half. We lived in the other half until recently and now have another place to live so are re-doing it to make it nicer and more marketable for the next tenant. Last time when we found tenants, we hired a company to find the tenants for us. They received applications, showed the place, and created the lease. We had to pay them about one month's rent for this service. It worked out really well at the time, but we are thinking now we should just do it ourselves. Does anyone have a check list of things that we need to do in order to find a tenant? Here are some items I'm aware of, but need to know more about each one and am probably missing some steps.

-Advertise property for rent (local FB page for our community, local list serv, Craigslist?)

-Schedule times with people to see place? Make private appointments or have open house?

-Credit check? No idea how to do this, but assume there are some resources out there?

-Draft a lease. We already have one for the other side, so would just plan on updating that one.

Appreciate any help people can provide! :)