Finding tenants / completing applications

[Gerald Dougherty]

Hi! we closed on our first rental properties earlier this month and are listing them through RentRedi, Zillow, and FB Marketplace. We used rentometer and BP calculators to determine appropriate rent, and are slightly below those numbers. I realize it isn't the best time of the year to be finding tenants due to holidays... That said, we have had quite a few people send us a message on Zillow stating that they want to tour the property, but once I send them our rental criteria and the link to either prequalify or complete an application, I never hear from them again. Seems weird that they'd want to schedule time to see the house, but won't fill out application. I'm trying to keep the process as simple as possible and respond to all messages quickly. Our rental criteria our pretty standard too - 650+ credit score, 3:1 income to rent, no evictions, etc. Any thoughts or tips are much appreciated. Thank you!!!

[Claude Diamond]

I always set up a zoom face to face call with ALL prospects prior to an in person or property meeting. You can qualify so much better when you can see the person you might do business with. Its also a great method to win people over and  persuade them. You also get to qualify and get tentative commitments so you don't have to waste time.

[Eliott Elias]

List it on the MLS as well, the best quality tenants use realtors.

[Kevin Sobilo]

@Gerald Dougherty, a lot of people don't want the hassle of applying or filling things out before they even know they want a place.

So, in my process, I do NO pre-screening and simply schedule 2 open houses per week. One during a weekday afternoon/evening and one on the weekend early afternoon. That accommodates most people's schedule.

Many people will reply and say they will come. Half of them won't show, but who cares because its an open house not an individual showing. After people see it they will apply if interested.

I usually only need to do 1-4 open houses to secure a tenant.

One more thing, when you explain your criteria. You might want to specify that the 3:1 income to rent ratio uses gross income (before taxes). If you don't explain that a lot of people will wrongly assume it means net income and then they won't think they qualify. 

[Brad Jacobson]

You're doing everything right.  I've found that I'll usually have 4-5 people reach out before I'll get an application.  Then I'll need to get 4-5 applications before one checks all the boxes.

The criteria you've outlined and the places you've posted should suffice.  If you don't have any serious prospects after the first half of January, I'd either throw out a "first month free" or lower the rent 10%.

Good luck!

[Austin F.]

Generic tour requests are pretty normally dead ends for me. Most qualified tenants will have questions included in their messages.

If I'm busy I'll often ignore the standard "so and so has requested a tour". If I'm not busy I usually message back something to the tune of "Before we take the time to schedule a tour please give me a call at xxx so I can answer any questions you may have".

[Curtis Mears]

@Gerald Dougherty

I like the requirements you have in place. For my process, once I receive any communication of interest, I always send them a cut and paste of my requirements (I also have them in the ad, but many people selectively ignore.) Thus will weed out the unqualified and save everyone's time. You will lose many of the people here as they do not qualify. Those that continue the process, now I schedule a showing. I do not give apps until after the showing. Who fills out an app for a car without demoing first? If they are still interested, now I give them an app. Most fill it out but not all.

In tenant searches, I would rather have 3 or 4 qualified applicants than 20 or 30 that most will not qualify.

[Nathan Gesner]

Quote from @Gerald Dougherty:

There are a lot of tire kickers out there. Don't be discouraged. I used to get 50 inquiries on one rental. Once I started running a credit/criminal background on every applicant (this was 12 years ago), suddenly the numbers dropped to maybe 10 - 15 inquiries on one rental. That's a good thing because I'm not wasting my time with people that aren't serious.

[John C.]

@Gerald Dougherty

We list on apartments, require an application which has credit and background checks prior to looking at a listing at all.

This will weed out, like Nathan said, the tire kickers and such.

We quit using FB, everyone gets tagged, 99% of them don't or wouldn't qualify, messages in the middle of the night, ect.

As far as credit score, we don't have a criteria for that but we analyze their credit history more than looking at the score itself. We have had applicants make 90k a year but their credit history was atrocious. Living paycheck to paycheck. Others had low credit scores but paid their credit cards and car payments on time every month, they just didn't have credit the system wants them to have for a higher score.

[Ginger Pruitt]

@Gerald Dougherty

We're in the same place. And have a property on the market right now, also that's struggling to get firm interest.

Think the changes we're making are to be more selective with the use of FB Marketplace and to leverage more open houses than we have.  Marketplace has been great for traffic and volume (and honestly the traffic supports our website SEO, too), but the quality of the those exploring is predictably lower than the Zillow syndicated sites and other.