All Forum Posts by: Jen R.

I'll share our process, but it's certainly not the only way to do things! We pre-screen interested individuals before offering to show them the property (we have them verify they make at least 3x the rent in monthly income/if they smoke/what kinds of pets/requested move-in date/etc. Once they assure us they meet our pre-qualifications, I give them a few timeframes to pick from to see the property. I schedule all showings over a couple of evenings, and set them at half hour intervals. I know others have success with showing the property to several applicants at the same time, but this method has worked out well for us. At the showing, I have applications available for people to fill out. Sometimes people ask to fill out an application before viewing the property, esp. in high demand areas, in which case I will email them an app, but again, only after they meet the screening criteria. 

Our application is pretty detailed; I don't use a generic form. The template I used as a base for creating our app came from Mike Butler's book, Landlording on Autopilot (but we have tweaked over time). There are some great tips in there on what to ask for in an application and why!

Next, we process one application at a time, and don't do background checks until everything else on the application has been verified, and all looks good. The background/credit check is basically the last report, to make sure that everything checks out and that there are no red flags. 

Hope that helps!

@Sarah Nguyen correct, we don't require electronic signatures - scanned is fine with us.

We had a real estate attorney draft our first lease, which was incredibly helpful. We have amended it ourselves over the years, but it was good to have that baseline, and know that everything was legal for our state/area. Might be worth looking into - it's a very worthwhile (and pretty minimal) expense IMO!

@Sarah Nguyen I wouldn't have any issues accepting a co-signer remotely, as we sign leases remotely when Tenants are moving here from out of town. However, I treat co-signers just like another Tenant, in that they also must fill out an application and consent to a background/credit check.

@Sarah Nguyen you are very welcome. In case it's helpful, thought I'd share that we also state the following in that same section of our lease: "Tenant may not occupy property without electric, gas, or water/sewer service except during brief interruptions beyond Tenant's control. Tenant agrees to pay on time all utility bills for which Tenant is responsible." 

We require that utilities be transferred by the move-in date; if they haven't arranged for the utility transfer, they don't get the keys. And yes, you should include in your lease; ours states "Tenant must change over all utility billing into Tenant's name and mailing address, to be effective upon the commencement date stated on lease."

@Ryan Ahlgrim - I know this is an old post, but in case anyone else reads it, this is a scam; people copy legit for rent listings, and post them "for sale" with a much lower rent price, and with different contact info, hoping for people to contact them and send them a deposit. Similar to Craigslist scammers. When you see these, you can report the listing to Zillow, and the ad is usually removed within 24 hours.

I would think that in order to split the profits 50/50, you would at least need to put up half of the initial investment, and probably more to counter the value of his expertise. Why would the flipper, in this case, want to take your $10k to give up half of his profits? He is providing 90% of the funding, and 100% of the knowledge. As someone who has rehabbed houses, I would much rather take out a loan to complete the rehab than take on a partner (which can be a headache) and give up profit. A better option for you might be to connect with someone who is successfully completing the BRRR strategy and ask if you can tag along on their next project. Perhaps you could offer some labor in return for the privilege of watching the process (demo, painting, landscaping, etc.).

@Bill Pate - I have a MacBook and just use the Annotate option in Preview; you just type in the text and adjust the opacity. If you don't have a mac or any other photo editing software, you can accomplish the same thing by using PowerPoint - it just adds a couple of extra steps, because first you input the photo into a slide, add your text (adjusting opacity to the level you want), then you have to save the slide as a jpeg file. 

Hope that helps!

In my area, Zillow and Craigslist are the most popular places that renters search, though it may be different in your area. 

A tip to prevent scammers from stealing your photos off of Craigslist or Zillow: I always watermark my images with our company name and phone number. We haven't had any issues since we started this. 

A tenant going through a child custody battle tried to frame the ex by setting the house on fire. 

Same property, different tenant: cancelled trash service and instead turned the second story of the home into the dump.