Tip for Tenant Screening! (ESP as owner occupant)

[Kyle Curtin]

Hi everyone! 

   I wanted to share a small tip that I just discovered after something very “interesting” happened when listing one of the units in my building that I owner occupy!

I posted the unit to Facebook marketplace without an address, and also have been utilizing the Zillow rental manager platform to post there as well. On Zillow, the address and unit number posts (no surprise there haha!), and I ended up having a potential tenant (not anymore after doing this!) SHOW UP completely unexpected and unannounced to my property. He was asking questions that were clearly in the post that he didn’t read and proceeded to ask me “when he could move in” and I mentioned that he has to do the same pre screening process as everyone else and that I am not showing the unit yet. I took down his name and number with no intention of calling him back just to get him to leave. I was more or less in shock that someone literally just came to my property completely unexpected, bothered one of my tenants, and tried to make a deal with me haha! 

I have told this story to some of the investors in my network with the goal of getting some laughs, but also to keep in mind that this is something that I realized can happen regardless of whether you are owner occupying the building or not. I did get a tip from a few investors to make sure you write in the description “by appointment only” or “no trespassing” etc. to try to prevent something like this happening in the future.

Has anyone had anything like this happen before? How did you work it out?