New Seattle landlord looking for advice

[Peter Yang]

We just bought a property in Seattle and are looking to rent it out. I know Seattle has crazy landlord-tenant rules - are there any experienced Seattle landlords that can give advice on tenant screening, etc? Thanks in advance.

[Bettina F.]

Are you in Seattle city limits?  The most onerous regulations are in Seattle proper.  The outlying cities are much more reasonable.  Download the Washington State LL/tenant booklet put out by the Secretary of State's office.  This, plus any applicable local laws, will become your Bible.  Make sure your lease/rental agreement and application process are in synch with the law.

Write up your applicant criteria.  The book Landlording by Leigh Robinson has good advice and a template.  Decide on minimum income, length of time in job, minimum credit score, prior LL references, criminal background criteria (read Seattle laws), etc.  Will you accept Section 8?  Will you require a lease or go M2M?  Will you mandate electronic collection of rent (means tenant must have bank account).   Are you subject to Fair Housing regulations?  This is your business and your property, so you need to decide what works best for this property. 

Then you advertise, take phone calls or emails from interested parties, arrange to show the property. This may be hard to do from San Mateo, so you may want to hire a property manager.  Interested applicants pay an app fee, complete an application and then you run a credit/criminal/eviction check on them.  My first checks I do on serious applicants are to my free on-line sites -- my state's court data base for criminal and Facebook to see if they have posted photos of undisclosed pets.  I check my county's assessor's website to see if the landlord they listed really owns the property, or if they are having a friend pose as a LL when I call for reference. 

In marketing, I try to get as many qualified applicants as possible to show interest in my apartments.  During screening, I am ruthless, and try to find reasons to disqualify applicants.  A bad tenant can be your greatest expense when you factor in the cost of eviction, unpaid rent and property damage.

I actually had my rental agreement, application and all related notices already on my computer, our LLC set up, and my bookkeeping system set on Quick Books BEFORE we bought our building. I had also downloaded any eviction forms needed and flow charted the eviction process for my state, so I understood what steps I had to take, in what order, if it came to that. Knowledge is power.