First time screening tenant

[Jay Sechowicz]

Hey everyone,

In March 2016, we bought our first property which is a duplex in Philadelphia that me and my fiance house hack.  We inherited tenants which we had until September of this year.  The apartment needed a total overhaul which we are finishing up now.  So long story short, we are about to find tenants for the first time.  I know a lot of the basics but wanted to reach out to see if anyone else had any tips, tricks, or strategies they do or don't use when searching.  Thanks in advance for any advice.

Jay

[Richard Jahnle]

@Jay Sechowicz A few tips that helped me land good tenants in my house-hack:

When marketing, put a big For Rent sign with your phone number in large numbers. Set up a Google Voice number if you don't want to have your phone number out in the public. Then, list the unit on the sites that everyone uses. Craigslist and Hotpads are the best (I think when you list on hotpads it automatically gets listed to Zillow, Trulia, Padmapper, etc. 

Make sure you set requirements to weed out potential bad tenants. Set a minimum credit score (600) and salary (3x monthly rent). Make your tenant pay for a background check and credit check (Cozy.co is good for this, it's free to use and they can do background and credit checks. You can also set up your tenants to make automatic payments on Cozy).

A lot of the forms I used in the application process came with the book on rental properties by Brandon Turner (besides the lease - get something that is specific to Philadelphia and PA). When you buy it on Kindle the forms come in Word form so you can just throw your address and names on them. Helped me out a lot.

Good luck - I hope you find tenants that will really make the rental income passive.