One of the biggest problems that real estate investors have is finding quality renters
. If you own real estate then chances are that you have put a significant amount of money into the properties that you own. It only takes one bad renter to ruin everything that you have worked to build. There are literally thousands of civil suits which go to court over tenants destroying properties.
This will ultimately cost the landlord money but the worst part is that it will take up your time and energy to repair. The key to making money as a landlord is to find renters who are going to respect that they do not own the property and therefore treat it with respect as well as pay the bills on time. This article is going to go over some of the ways that you can screen potential tenants so that you can actually make money on your property.
One of the most important things that you can do is to make sure that they person makes enough money. Usually, you will want to verify that they make enough that one month's rent is about one quarter of their monthly income. This will help to prevent cash flow problems in the future; don't just take their word for it though you need to verify the income so that you know they are not lying. A common way to do this is to ask for a pay stub. If they do not have any of these available then you can ask to see bank statements or if all else fails a tax return to at least verify that they make enough per year. The rule is however, that if they cannot show you that they have a regular income that you do not rent to them under any circumstances.
The second thing that will help you to screen out people who are going to cause you trouble is to perform a credit check there are several websites which can do this for you and the fees are not all that expensive. One thing that many landlords do is ask for a thirty dollar application fee to pay for the check. The credit report will allow you to see if they have ever been evicted and when, whether they are behind on all of their bills or if they are generally really good with money. Someone with a high score is who you want to rent to.