Would you accept this tenant?

[Kevin Huang]

A gentleman called, and asked if he could rent my townhouse over the phone.

Said that his employer would pay for the rent, and the monthly rent would be directly deposited into my bank account.
Also said that he'd like to sign a 2-year lease.

Red flags for me are:
1. Is it safe to give out your bank account info, for the tenant to pay for rent?

I've heard sometimes it's possible for an individuel to take money out of your checking account, if he/she knows the routing & account number, w/o an actual check.
I've also heard that in some states, as long as the tenant wires a portion of the rent into your account, you can't evict them, even though the amount isn't the full rent.

2. The guy's currently working out of state, so I guess he has legitimate reason not being able to see the place in person, which would also give me a chance to check him out.
However, it's definitely not ideal to rent to someone w/o meeting him in person.

On the other side, I'm attracted to the 2-year lease, and my place has been vacant for a month, and I need to fill it soon.

What do you guys think?
Would you rent to this guy or no?

TIA
Kevin

[John Matthews]

Have you spoken to past references? Have you spoken with his work about them paying the rent (are they a legitimate company)? Has he been evicted? Did you do a full background check? If you can't answer all of those questions with the right answer, then I'd say no.

I know you can put language in  your lease which says that partial acceptance of rent does not make eviction impossible, but I don't know how well that will hold up in court. You could always use a site like dwolla.com or even paypal to accept payments then you don't have to worry about them taking money out of your account. I don't know if they can pull funds from your account without your permission.

If you are still looking for a renter than you aren't advertising well enough or your priced too high. Lowering the rent by $50/mo and losing $600/year is way better than needing to evict, having your money stolen, house ruined, etc.

Personally, if it were me and you had any doubts but you really wanted to get this guy in, get him in on a month to month lease, so if there are issues, you just issue a 30 day notice to quit/vacate, then you'll have a much easier time to evict, since you don't need a reason, it's just a non-renewal. Then if you like them you can always have them re-up in a few months for a full 2 year term.