Ridiculous rental applicants self managed long distance rentals

[Susanne Owens]

One applicant,

Does everyone receive the ridiculous, "can I rent your place?" applications that I do? They send me an email stating, "oh my credit ruined after a recent divorce and i have 2 small kids and want to rent in a safe neighborhood". She doesn't meet the 3X rent to income rule and When I download her credit application she has defaulted on EVERY account she has for the last 3 years!!! NEVER made any payments on anything....What the heck? thats not a divorce ruining your credit with some late payments that YOU never being responsible for any of your payments!!!

Next applicant,

I dont have a job yet but "I starts at the CVS on Oct 28th. The last place I live now I paid in cash up front for the whole 6 month lease that is up in February, but I can end it early. I have a 'friends daughter' that stays with me often, is it okay to have overnight company often?" What the what? 

My thought is #1 drug dealer??? cash up front for a whole lease "to prove I can pay" or #2 suspicious activity of prostitution or human trafficking for the friends daughter overnight frequently.

Just needing to vent, I just listened to Craig Curelop, #thefiguy on the regular BP podcast and on the BP Money podcast and currently watching Breaking Bad series, so maybe I am a little untrusting with my world view right now, but I would have never had the nerve to fill out or ask for such forbearances??? Anybody else have similar experiences? I want to turn this into a laughable experience but they are wasting mine and their time. 

[Jim Goebel]

@Susanne Owens

Yes, it happens.  Keep the faith!  When the right one comes along, hopefully your standards haven't dropped too much after the deluge of people that don't seem to have them!

[Bjorn Ahlblad]

@Susanne Owens wow! my applicants are applying at your place too? ;))

[Account Closed]

Don’t watch those shows during lease up times. ;)

But in reality just keep looking and advertise everywhere you can think of.  I like to google my town and rental and other variety of terms and see what comes up for advertising places and use those on top of whatever you are using now.  Don’t drop your standards to fill a unit it rarely works out in your favor. 

[Susanne Owens]

@Bjorn Ahlblad yes your tenants are moving to Foley, Al. They want the gulf coast! 😂😂 Get ready you re-list your rental.

[Russ B.]

That's why it's so important to screen.. and stick to your requirements. 

The majority of tenants are perfectly fine, but they don't move that often (and when they do, they only apply one time). 

The people that can't get in anywhere, on the other hand, will send out applications like spam until somebody bites. So, you're bound to hear from them, even if there are only a few around. 

[Candace Pfab]

Are you using any pre-screening tools to weed these types of applicants out?  We just recently helped a client rent their new construction home in Foley and another one in Gulf Shores and found them excellent tenants by laying out the credit/background expectations clearly up front & then if the applicant wants to move forward, they pay the $39 to Turbo Tenant for application fee.  We only show the property to them if they meet the pre-screening qualifications.  In Foley, the first people we showed the property to applied & rented and have been great tenants.  On the second house we showed to two parties & the second one applied & was accepted.  Both are excellent tenants.  I did the pre-screening through Survey Monkey, but I think Turbo Tenant has some new tools to incorporate that into their process better. Our clients think I am a magician, but I think it's just putting the right tools into place.  Due to Fair Housing, we have to be careful not to be subjective in the process.  I find that most people that know they won't qualify, disappear when they see the screening questionnaire.  Hope that helps!  If you need anything, don't hesitate to reach out!  

[Susanne Owens]

@CandicePfab yes I use Avail.co and it  is a great resource for landlords/property managers.  It handles collecting rent, storing our lease, maintenance requests, and they must pay $55 for the full application which requires them to upload proof of income and legal government ID, rental history with references, credit report and eviction report. It also lists all our properties for us on Zillow, apartments.com, realtor.com etc I am very strict with the application process and do not even arrange to show them the property unless they qualify, and in fact we have 2 tenants at other properties at Cottages on the Greene in 2 year leases. I have had nothing but excellent tenants, thanks to all the information and advise given by the BP podcasts. 

[Susanne Owens]

@Russ 

@Russ B.thanks for the perspective. It helps! Never thought about it that way from that limelight. This is my and my husband’s investment and I don’t want the headache and hassle of bad tenants. If I wouldn’t hire them to work for me kind of standards then I sure won’t let you rent!! But can you imagine someone willing to pay 12k upfront Instead of showing proof of income!! 😲🙄 Whether they could actually produce the money would be a different story I bet!!!

[Dennis M.]

If your not using Facebook marketplace your going to be wasting time your time blindly screening through insane idiots with green hair employed at the localTaco Bell .

[Sherif Lyons]

Originally posted by @Susanne Owens:

@Russ 

@Russ B.thanks for the perspective. It helps! Never thought about it that way from that limelight. This is my and my husband’s investment and I don’t want the headache and hassle of bad tenants. If I wouldn’t hire them to work for me kind of standards then I sure won’t let you rent!! But can you imagine someone willing to pay 12k upfront Instead of showing proof of income!! 😲🙄 Whether they could actually produce the money would be a different story I bet!!!

 I can absolutely imagine someone paying that upfront. Im currently a leasing agent but when i was first starting out i worked for a family friend who turned out to be a slumlord. People that pay upfront for rent longterm 8/10 usually have serious issues and generally, seem to be involved in illicit activities. There are exceptions but good luck finding them below B class properties. No matter how bad your bottom line may be, do not accept these people unless its a company paying ahead for them or they are Strenuously vetted. I have yet to see a property that can recover from having meth manufactured inside it.

[Ola Dantis]

@Susanne Owens I've seen a couple of these situations... The tenants come for a tour of one of our units and some of them start spilling all about beans about their life because I ask open-ended questions like "what are you up these days"? 

After they finish their mini Netflix-worthy drama series, they ask so would you rent to me?!!

I say please see the requirements to apply on the table by the door. 

[Jennifer Rysdam]

I feel your pain. I self-manage my 8 plex. We are about 40 miles from a big city. I put my property on Marketplace and get about 300 people who will message me with "interested". Usually at 2 am. I'm always sure to reply when I get up at 6 am with "great, here's the link to my website". I'd like to just say, "Good for you", lol! Then they'll ask a bunch of questions, which were already answered in the listing, only to then ask where it's located, which is ALSO in the listing. Then I never hear from them again. They are big city people looking for a good deal on rent and pay NO attention to where it's even at, lol!

[John Teachout]

We have a tenant profile for each property listing requirements and other info. That gets emailed to interested parties and about 95% of the time, that's the last we hear of them. We probably have about 2 applications per property. In our experience we sometimes take a chance on someone and rent to them even though they don't fully meet our requirements. ie, take a lower credit score/tenant score with additional deposit, etc. Guess what? The tenants that we lowered our standards for are the ones that pay late and have a lot of "crisis" in their lives. Maybe we need to stop doing that. lol.

As far as someone wanting to pay a year's rent in advance, that's not uncommon and there's a variety of reasons for it. It may not even be legal to accept that arrangement in your state so check first but for most landlords, the primary concern is not getting rent, so if you have the rent...

That advance rent shouldn't prevent you from screening them though.