Screening Tenants - Waiting to Accept/Deny

[Nick Peraino]

Hey everyone,

I'm renting my first property and have been studying Brandon's book on rental management. I have most of my paperwork and process in place.

My question: 

Is it okay to collect and run applications, and then wait on accepting or denying until I feel I have the best prospect?  How do you all handle this?  I am expecting those that apply to be following up shortly thereafter to get an answer.  Would like to know the best ethics as well as responding to these followup inquiries. 

Thanks!

[Patricia Steiner]

If you're charging the applicant an application fee then I don't think it's intellectually honest to "fee and hold."  I generally interview a lot of candidates and I verbally decline/weed out those who just on the surface would not qualify (smoker, guy with 15 snakes, person trying to re-negotiate the rent down, someone asking me if an eviction will be a problem or if I plan on calling their last landlord, or asking about a payment grace period). By sharing what the qualifying criteria is beforehand, others can self-select out and you should be able to actually go to the application phase with one or two candidates.  Do the work upfront and avoid the needless collection of applications.