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Tenant Screening: How to Find the Best Tenant for Your Atwater Rental Property

Erika Paulus • April 23, 2021

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California’s strict rental laws have left a lot of landlords and rental property owners nervous. This is especially true when it comes to tenant screening. We understand your concerns. It’s easy to make an expensive mistake if you don’t know the federal fair housing laws or you haven’t kept up with California’s regulations protecting tenants’ rights. 


Working with an
experienced Atwater property management company can reduce your risk and keep you compliant. We’ve been effectively and thoroughly screening tenants for years, and we know how to do it within the legal framework while still ensuring you get the best possible tenant for your rental property.


Applications and Consistent Rental Criteria 


A good tenant screening process begins with the application. It’s important that you collect a completed and signed application from any resident who is 18 years of age or older. Your application should ask for all the pertinent information and include a release that gives you permission to check credit, background, and rental references. 


Before anyone applies for your property, you want to provide them with a written set of your rental criteria. That criteria should explain the standards that need to be met before an applicant is approved for your rental property. Perhaps you’ll require a specific credit score or maybe you want to see income that’s at least three times the monthly rent. No past evictions is a common criteria, or if you’re more lenient, perhaps your standards will say no evictions in the last five years. 


Set this criteria, put it in writing, and then be consistent with it when you’re screening. Every applicant must be evaluated the same way, otherwise you can run into fair housing trouble. 


Checking Credit and Verifying Income


A credit check is the cornerstone of every rental application. This will tell you whether the applicant is responsible in managing debt, paying bills, and staying on top of most financial obligations. 


While you might want to require a minimum credit score, we suggest you remember that not all debt is created equal. If someone has a high credit score but owes a former apartment community thousands of dollars in unpaid rent, that applicant is going to be more of a risk than the applicant with a lower credit score because of medical debt. 


Look for how consistently housing-related bills are paid. Are there collections from utility accounts? This may not bode well. Instead of hoping for perfect credit, look for a financially stable applicant who has a record of paying the bills that pertain to their rental homes. 


Income must be verified as well. You can collect pay stubs, copies of bank statements, or tax returns that demonstrate how much your prospective tenants earn. Make sure it’s enough to cover the monthly rental amount. 


Talking to Current and Former Landlords 


The best way to predict how a person will perform in your rental property is by taking a look at how they’ve performed previously. Ask for rental references and take the time to check in with these current and former landlords. Ask if rent was paid on time and if any property damage was left behind. If the applicant has pets, ask if the pet was well-behaved. Find out if the landlord would be willing to rent to this person again. 

These are some of the most basic things to remember when you’re screening Atwater tenants. If you’d like some help managing this process, we have years of experience and a lot of resource. Contact our team at Wisdom Property Management & Realty, Inc. 

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