The Key To Avoiding Tenant Eviction... It's Not What You Think

Although tenants may believe landlords revel in the idea of evicting someone from their property, the reality is that landlords want to avoid eviction almost as much as tenants do. Evictions are costly, time-consuming, and often result in damaged property and a whole lot of drama.

So how exactly can a landlord best avoid tenant evictions? The answer has traditionally been tenant screening. While I'm not here to tell you that tenant screening is a bad thing (more on that below), I am here to tell you that the first step to avoiding tenant evictions is not actually the screening process.

Commonly held answers to avoiding tenant evictions include

• Screening tenants
• Keeping your property in great condition
• Communicating more clearly with tenants

While these are all fine and well, the reality is that avoiding tenant eviction actually starts with your marketing process.

Why The Way You Advertise Your Rental Property Matters

It may seem counterintuitive. How can advertising your rental property actually help you avoid a tenant eviction down the road? The answer is in the pairing of outstanding property marketing with integrated tenant screening.

It Begins With A Larger Pool

As a landlord, what often trips up the tenant screening process is that you simply do not have enough applicants for your property to be particularly picky. When you only have two applicants, and you desperately need to fill a property, odds are high you will let some screening qualifications slip. After all, it becomes easy to think, “it’s better to have someone in this property paying me rent than for it to sit vacant.”

Therefore, the key to being able to better screen tenants lies in a bigger pool of applicants. Imagine it like this. You have a rental property that has been on the market for two months, sitting vacant. You aren’t getting very many leads when suddenly Betty Joe applies. Perhaps you still run her through a tenant screening process, but you wind up being a little lax on qualifications you would normally care about greatly. Her credit score is under your normal requirement, and she has some fairly serious outstanding debt. However, there is something she did right in your book, she applied for the property.

Picture instead a scenario where you put your property on the market and, within weeks, Betty Lou applies, along with ten more candidates. When you run these candidates all through the screening process, you can weed out people like Betty Lou with shoddy credit scores and outstanding debts.

Achieving That Greater Pool

You are likely thinking at this point, “Sure that sounds great! Excellent! Having countless applicants to choose from is fantastic, but, let’s be realistic if I don’t have that many applicants it isn’t for a lack of trying.” The question then becomes, how can you achieve a greater pool of applicants?

The solution is found in four simple steps:

1. Recognize The Right Medium

For starters, you need to understand the way the modern rental market works. With a world that is focused increasingly on mobile devices and online platforms, you cannot ignore one of the biggest rental markets that exists. You must list your properties online. Gone are the days of putting your rental in the newspaper and calling it a day. Today, not only do you need to list your property online, you need to list it in multiple locations across an array of channels. Implementing a free online rental property marketing tool will cut down on how much time this takes, while increasing your reach drastically.

2. Create Compelling Copy

Our lives are inundated with marketing. From the moment we turn on the morning news, to the last glance we take to our Facebook feed at night, ad copy is constantly in front of our eyes. This means that when you are creating a property listing, you need it to stand out. People are trained to tap into the best ad copy, and they will quickly be turned off by low quality descriptions. Does your listing have photos? Are those photos high-quality? Did you write copy for your listing that points out the best features of the property? The more fine tuned you can make your property listing, the better chance of someone taking the time to apply.

Tip: Look for a property listing software that allows you to save your properties even after they have been filled. This will save you time down the road. When the property is vacant again, you can simply turn your property listing back on with minor updates, such as price or availability change.

3. Make It Easier To Apply

Once someone lands on your listing, you need the process for application to be simple. If you are asking someone to print off an application, fill it out, find an envelope, buy a stamp, and mail it back to you, you are cutting down the pool of applicants you could have tapped into. People want fast, easy, and quick solutions. Using an online rental application tool that integrates with your property listings will help you ensure that those are interested, actually take the time to fill out an application.

4. Tie It Into Tenant Screening

As said above, I am not here to tell you that marketing alone will save you from tenant evictions. A proper screening process including a credit check, background check, and eviction report will go a long way in the process of finding the right, long term tenant. The key here is to make your life easier by using software that not only markets your property, allows applicants to fill out a form online, but also gives you the chance to use that same portal to screen them. When you integrate the entire process together, you cut down the hassle and time investment on your part, leading to less of a chance of you cutting corners or letting things slide.

What are some ways you have worked to avoid tenant eviction? Let us know below!