10 Tips for Finding the Perfect Tenant for Your Rental Property

I’m not a professional property manager. In my humble opinion, I’m better.

Because I’m the landlord. And as the homeowner, I’ve got my skin in the game. A lot more skin than the 10% cut that a property manager takes.

After being in the rental property real estate game for the past six years, I’ve successfully scoped out, selected, and changed over eight tenants across five rental properties, ranging from high-rise downtown condos to single-family homes. And I am ever so happy to say that I have a 100% batting record.

While every landlord must mentally (and financially) be prepared for the every-landlord’s-worst-nightmare-of-a-tenant that trashes and destroys the house — your house — I’m happy to say that I have yet to regret any of my tenant choices.

Here is my process every time I’m screening a potential tenant. I’m sharing this to debunk land lording myths, tear down barriers to entry, and share my learnings and experiences.

1. Know what you’re looking for

Start with your wish list of an ideal tenant to match your market conditions, your risk levels, and your personal preferences. You might not be able to find the perfect tenant, but it’ll be important for you to reflect upfront on what’s important to you.

For example:

• Are you looking to rent to a family or roommates? While renting to a family might offer more stability, renting to roommates can normally pull in higher rents.
• Would you be willing to rent to someone with pets? You substantially open up your pool of potential tenants if you’re open to pets, but you do have to accept the risks and potential damage that pets can do to the house. Cat pee in the carpets, dog nails ripping up hardwood floors, etc.
• Are you looking for a one-year lease or a month-to-month tenant? A fixed duration lease gives you more certainty in having a tenant, but a month-to-month tenant gives you more flexibility if the relationship sours.

2. Invest in wonderful photos of your property

You would think this would be common sense… but given the number of rental advertisements I’ve come across that don’t even have any photos, apparently not! Their loss is your gain, right?

When taking your photos, make sure the property is cleaned up, arranged neatly and nicely, and looking like a place that someone would want to call home. Just like how houses that are staged with furniture sell faster and for a higher price, aim for nicely furnished photos.

Invest in the wide-angle photos. Try taking a photo of your bedroom with your phone and tell me how many photos you take to fully capture that one room. These wide-angle photos will not only actually be able to capture what your place looks like without making you feel you’re looking through the width of an iPhone camera, but they’ll also make the place look larger.

Ensure you have bright lighting, even if that means you have to wait for a sunny day to take your photos. No one wants to live in a dark, gloomy dungeon.

Pro tip: Keep these photos and reuse them each time you have a tenant changeover!

3. Make a writing exercise out of your rental advertisement

Your rental ad is the first impression your future potential tenant will have of you. And while you may not always receive what you sow, it doesn’t hurt to put your best foot forward and put some effort into this advertisement.

What do I mean by effort? I mean, channel your high school English teacher, giving you a writing assignment to be persuasive and energetic in selling your property as someone’s next home.

Not a creative writer, naturally? Here’s how I build up a rental advertisement:

• The first layer — Make sure you have the basic details (rental price, lease expectations, availability date, pets or no pets, smoking or no smoking, your contact information, etc) so your ad is sufficiently informative to be useful. This also acts as your first (albeit not consistently effective) screening for tenants.
• The second layer — Point out nearby schools, amenities and highlights (i.e. restaurants, grocery stores, shopping plazas, parks, etc). Don’t assume potential tenants know much about the neighborhood. Include distances to nearby landmarks and public transportation. I know anyone can use Google maps nowadays, but trust me, I’ve been asked these kinds of questions.
• The third layer —Start painting a picture of what life here could be. Talk up the attractive, positive qualities of your area. Hint: Everything is an attraction for your neighborhood. A neighborhood in the suburbs brings tranquility and a family-focused lifestyle. A neighborhood along a busy traffic artery provides a bustling atmosphere with easy access to major roads and highways for ease and convenience. A neighborhood in the sketchy parts of town brings a layer of living life on the edge — just kidding!
• The fourth layer — Energize it. Put on your greasy car salesman hat, and start adding in those buzz words to bring your ad to life. If you don’t sound excited about your own rental property, how can you expect a complete stranger to get excited about it?

Just feeling not up to this task? You can outsource it! Look me up on Fiverr → the_allison :)

4. Invest in your rental advertisement platform

This will vary from market to market but there will generally be a combination of paid and free websites that you can post your rental ad on. I’ve done both and I do have to say that in my market, there is a very stark difference in the quality of potential tenants when I fork over the $30 fee for an ad with www.rentfaster.ca as opposed to the free www.kjiji.ca listing.

Don’t forget about the old-school “for rent” sign on the front lawn. Not everyone looking for a rental is tech-savvy and you’ll be surprised how much “foot traffic” can come through. I’ve received phone calls from prospective tenants who were going for a neighborhood walk, saw the “for rent” sign, and were asking if they could come in to see the property right then and there!

5. Be responsive

Another tip that sounds like common sense! But just like how you would like good, prompt customer service, so does any potential tenant. And this is the easiest way for you the landlord to outshine any property manager.

I offer up both my email address and my cellphone number to assist with potential tenants reaching me. When I’ve got a property to rent out, for once I’ll shove down my millennial aversion to talking on the phone; I’ll turn on my notifications and ensure my phone’s ringer is on and loud to ensure I don’t miss anything. I generally respond within minutes of an inquiry and this makes me stand out.

Another thing that goes on pause when I’ve got an active listing is my social life. When someone is interested in my property and they seem like they might be the right fit, I’ll jump on that to get them in for a viewing as soon as possible. It sucks when you think you might have the perfect tenant but you schedule their viewing for the end of the week only for them to message you back and say, “Sorry, found something else.”

Case study! One of my rental properties needed to be turned over and when I was scoping out the competition, I groaned because the house next door was also listed for rent. Then I noticed that it was managed by a property management company and not the owner. Wanting to test the waters, I listed my property $100 / month higher than my next-door neighbor. As I was doing the viewings for my place, folks who were coming through would comment that they also tried to book viewings next door but never heard back. A prime example of how no property management company can possibly care as much about your place as the owner does.

6. The screening starts immediately

Let’s back up half a step. Before I even arrange a time for interested parties to do a viewing, I ask the following questions:

• Who will be living here and what is the relationship between everyone?
• What do you do for a living?
• Any pets or smoking?

Ultimately, it’s my property and if a tenant chooses to trash the place, the costs of repair and clean up are on me. So with that frame of mind, you bet I’m going to be a bit nosy. I shouldn’t even use the word nosy. It truly is part of the “due diligence” process.

95% of the people I’m screening have no problem answering those three basic questions. Remember Step 1 above when I asked who your ideal tenant is? Here’s your chance to gauge if your “dream tenant” is “real”, or if you have to adjust some of your expectations.

The 5% of people that sass me for asking my three initial screening questions … no thanks! Remember, this is the start of a landlord-tenant relationship.

Another very very very important thing to remember — it is better to leave your property vacant than to rent it out to a terrible tenant. It might hurt to suck up a month (or two … or three …) of mortgage payments and bills but how much will it cost you to remediate a marijuana grow-op or to evict a tenant who refuses to pay you rent? The Internet is littered full of landlord nightmares.

7. The first date (aka the initial viewing)

I like to do the viewings myself so that I can get a gut-feel of the person. I’m casually chatty — equal parts saleswoman showing off the features of the place and equal parts private detective trying to pick up as much information as possible. It’s a dance and the mechanics of who’s wooing who is constantly shifting.

It’s also the first time you can “sniff test” a potential tenant. I mean that figuratively but it can also apply very literally. A couple of examples to illustrate my point:

• Applicant tells me he doesn’t smoke but I get a strong whiff of cigarette smoke? Hmm, suspicious.
• “Oh, what was it that you said you do for a living again?” Interesting how that isn’t the same as what you told me during my initial screening emails

8. The chase (aka application form)

After the viewing, the ball’s in the potential tenant’s court. I’ll give them my application form which asks for:

• Personal details and contact information (you need the birth date for a credit check)
• Driver’s license (or some form of identification)
• Employment and monthly salary
• Current address (useful for a credit check)
• References
• Approval for me to do a credit check (THIS IS IMPORTANT!)

Not every person who comes for a viewing takes an application form and hey, that’s alright. As passive non-committal Canadians, I find people rarely tell me to my face, “This property isn’t right for me.” Instead, they’ll vaguely leave me hanging with a, “I’ll reach out later.”

Folks … there is no later; you have been rejected. Time to move on and continue your screening.

9. The second date (aka due diligence)

I know other landlords ask for pay stubs to verify that they are indeed employed. Some landlords also like to do a criminal check. Personally, I’m happy with a credit check unless there are red flags requiring further follow-up.

Here’s why I consider the credit check the most important piece of information (after my gut feel from the viewing):

• The credit check tells me whether or not that person pays his / her bills on time. If they’re the type of person who consistently pays bills punctually, the odds of them paying me rent punctually increases significantly. Depending on which site you used to pull the credit check, the report may even give you the probability of them defaulting on their rent.
• The credit check also shows me if there’s any outstanding bad credit (i.e. credit card debt) that would distract the tenant from paying me rent. Given that I as the landlord actually don’t have that much power to force a tenant to pay rent, I’ve got to rely on circumstantial evidence.
• The credit check includes current and previous employment, which I’ll use to double check what they previously told me. If the story isn’t going around and suspicious red flags are popping up, this is your chance to cut and run.

I rarely call personal or employer references. Of course, all the personal references are going to tell me this person is great or they wouldn’t have been listed as a reference in the first place! And as for employer references, so long as it lines up with the credit check, frankly, I don’t really care if the person’s a hard worker or takes too many coffee breaks.

10. The social media snoop (aka more due diligence)

I love the Internet! So many valuable goodies to be found here. Tenant screening must have been so much harder before we all felt the need to freely post personal information out there for the world to see.

Always always always toss any potential tenant’s name into Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. It’s yet another stop in your journey of sense checking the story a potential tenant has given you.

Well, there you have it — 10 tips for finding the perfect tenant for your rental property. Ultimately, the final tenant decision resides with you.

You can dig and poke and prod, trying to uncover who this stranger that you’re going to trust to live in and take care of your property is … but if you want to pursue the life of a landlord, at some point you’re going to have to take a leap of fate, hand over those keys, and trust that you’ve done all that you can to vet your tenant.

While owning rental properties has often been touted as a way to build up passive income, don’t mistake “passive” for “no work, pain or stress”.