Possible tenant

[Georgia Acres]

My newest possible ternate is a family that has lived in the wife's parents house for 6yrs. She says her parents moved to a retirement village so she moved into her childhood home and paid her parents rent to help them have extra income. 1. How do I check her history of paying on time? 2. Her husband has been on his job for 5yrs, he's a general manager of Longhorn Steakhouse but, she has changed jobs 3 times in the last 2 yrs.... 3. Her job is a property manager.... For some reason that intimidates me alittle. I'm new to renting and don't want to be the newbie on my own property! Any red flags here?

[Nathan Reed]

1) Personally, since there's not going to be any good tenant references, I would just do a credit check on her and her husband and use that to gauge how seriously they take their financial obligations.

2) I've seen a lot of families where the husband has a full-time job and the wife primarily takes care of the kids and works a part-time job. There's usually a lot of turnover in those part-time jobs so I wouldn't consider it a big red flag (if they do in fact have a similar situation).

*Note: I would also verify both of their incomes and do a background check on each of them. (Have them pay for the background checks and let them know up front that they will have to pay for them as part of the application fee.)

3) Don't be scared. You should have the qualifications that you require of any tenant written down and kept in your home/office so that you can back up your decision when you turn someone down. (This helps thwart discrimination claims!) Also, it's okay to be a new landlord. You don't have to hide that fact. Just learn to be accommodating but fair and enforce your rental contract when you need to.

So, if everything checks out, awesome. If not, she should understand that you have written standards that tenants have to meet for you to rent to them and that her and her husband did not meet them.