All Forum Posts by: Paul Ronto

First off, congrats on closing on your first rental. Owning rental property is a great investment! Sounds like you have a lot of your ducks in a row, doing open house style showings, and knowing the importance of tenant screening. The hardest part of being a landlord is finding the right tenant. Doing your due diligence is crucial to the success of your rental, so taking the right steps like pulling criminal, credit and eviction reports, calling references, and asking the right questions is key. There are plenty of options out there to help you with tenant screening, picking one that fits your needs is really what's more important. Some products help you with more than just screening, like collecting applications, marketing your property and so forth, others just help you pull reports. So depending on what your needs are will really dictate which solution you pick. As for your question about who should pay for the screening report, personally, I believe that any tenant that's not willing to pay for their own screening report is either hiding something or may not ultimately be 100% interested in your property. It's one way to weed out potentially bad tenants. Just my personal opinion on that. Anyway, let us know if you have any other questions, we'd love to help. And good luck getting your new condo rented!

@Steve Babiak I'm going to have our customer support team reach out to you to help with this. 

@Steve Babiak , can you direct message me with the property address you're referencing and we'll have a look into the issue you're having. Normally you can easily edit your listing in TT and all your public listings will update automatically. If this is not happening for you we'll get to the bottom of it.  As for Craigslist, you are correct, there's no way to automatically post a listing there, but we do create a snippet of code that you can cut and paste into Craiglist that formats all your listing info easily. 

What's your property's address? We'll look into it for you and get you an answer as soon as we can. Thanks for bringing it to our attention Thomas. 

I second a few of the things said here. Not getting emotionally attached is hard, especially if you are house hacking and moving out of properties that you've put a lot of time and energy into to turn them into rentals. I have to constantly remind myself that it's a business, and there will be expenses and some damage, and not to get so tied up in the property remaining the perfect condition I want to believe I left it in. Really diligent tenant screening has helped me with this big time, I worry less now, but in the early days, it was tough for me. 

Mulitple turnovers on the same day is tough too. I live and manage in a college town, so all properties basically Turn on August 1st. When 3 or 4 properties turn in the same year it's overwhelming, especially with a full-time job still. I've found that again finding better tenants has helped this as there is less to do, but also really trying hard to retain tenants has helped my sanity a ton. I incentivize tenants to stay if they are good tenants, with either no rent increases for another year, or a smaller increase, or sometimes, I'll even give a one month discount for resigning if they are really good. Any property I can keep rented to good tenants is one less I have to turn. It's also helped a ton to again run my rentals like a business, and expect expenses, like hiring cleaners, painters, and so forth. I used to pinch every penny and try to do all this myself, I'd get my mom and sisters to come to town, I'd buy pizza and beer and we'd go from house to house cleaning, painting and fixing things. It was a nightmare, and it's late July in Colorado, so it was always 100 degrees out. Recently I've realized that a few hundred bucks to hire help allows me to focus solely on the bigger issues, and not worry so much about things like touching up paint or cleaning bathrooms. 

Honestly though, over the past 10 years, I've learned to really enjoy being a landlord. I create great relationships with most of my tenants and having to deal with them and random issues is usually not too terrible anymore. Great post @Krystallin Baker , and thanks for all the insight in these answers!

Have you looked into an actual online application? There are a bunch of options out there that make the application process easy, and even integrate with tenant screening reports. 

@Mark Vandzura this question is always asked. It really depends on what you are looking for, but from your description, you still want some control and don't want to pay 10% plus finders fees. I think you answered your own question on the first front, not to go with a traditional PM. As for hiring someone, you can hire an assistant you help you with things, I don't think most states have an issue with that, but check to be sure. Where you get into trouble as others have noted, is when you hire someone to just manage your whole property, and usually, those types of people do need to be licensed. 

With the tech that's out there though, continuing to manage your properties on your own should be doable, and honestly, if you start using the right tools, you should be able to keep your 10% and easily manage your properties on your own. 

Good luck and let us know how it goes or if there's anything else we can help you with!

@Matt Paris this really depends on what you want. Are you looking for just screening or other services as well? There are a few solutions out there today, but your needs dictate which is best for you. Feel free to reach out directly and I can answer any questions you might have and help you find the best software for your needs. 

As others here have mentioned. I would be as upfront and honest as possible so you don't waste your time. List it as a roommate situation, a lot of people looking for a 2 bed 1 bath would walk out of a showing if they found out there was a person they had to live with they didn't know which wasn't disclosed in the ad. So be upfront about it. 

I would word it like this:

Headline: Looking for 1-2 Roommates To Share a 3 Bed, 1 Bath

Body: 3 bed, 1 bath Condo with one current resident. Looking for one to two people to split the unit with..... 

Is the current tenant on the lease for the whole place? Or is he/she one a lease for only one room? If the current tenant is on the lease for the whole place, they are responsible for the rent, regardless of if he/she finds roommates. If they are only on a lease per bedroom, I would suggest trying to negotiate a new lease when you find other renters interested in sharing the space, to put them all three on one lease rather than 3 separate leases. Makes renting out the whole unit easier than just renting out a single room. Just a thought. 

Either way, blast it online, and be sure to do thorough tenant screening so you ensure you are renting to stand up renters that will take care of the place and pay on time. 

Good luck @Roshan K. , and let us know if you have other issues or questions as they pop up, we're happy to help. Just a tip, I've had tenants that had great jobs that I'd assume meant they were financially responsible, but terrible credit ratings due to frivolous behavior, so although it's highly likely that everything will be fine this time, just be careful. 

Normally in this situation, I have both tenant and co-signor fill out an application so I can check both out. Nothing kills your rental margins like a delinquent tenant and an eviction.