Prospective Tenants

As a landlord, you have the freedom and allowed to choose the right tenant to occupy your rental property and make decisions based on legal business reasons.

Finding the right tenant for your rental property is not that easy. You have to consider certain factors to give you a better chance to find the most qualified applicants or prospective tenants before you could finally accept them as your residents.

It would be better to conduct property screening to applicants first before you make any decision. By screening an applicant, it will help protects you, your property, and the local community while adhering to the Fair Housing Act (FHA). The purpose of screening an applicant is to evaluate the probability that tenant can manage to follow the terms of the lease or rental agreement and helps you determine whether or not they are responsible enough to make rental payments.

Ways to find the right tenants:

• Follow the law. Property owners or property managers should respect and treat all applicants equally. Most landlords are governed by the Federal Housing Act (FHA), it covers the right and protects applicants and tenants to ensure they are treated with fair consideration. The Fair Housing Act prevents discrimination and protects the following:
• Color
• Race
• Religion
• Gender
• National origin
• Familial status
• Mental or physical disability
• Take your time. When looking for the right prospective tenants, it would be good to have enough time and don’t jump right away in a decision that you might regret later on. You may take your time and don’t rush to find the most qualified tenant. Finding the right tenant will not give you or at least lessen the problems and mistakes in the long run.
• Create an online listing that sets expectations. It would be good to create an online listing that will set the expectations of the prospective tenants and describe the property. Mention whatever you want to require to be included in the lease or rental agreement and you may also include that want to run a tenant screening if ever you decide to do so.   
• Charge a fair rental price. To determine the amount of rent that you will charge will depend on what your home market value in the market. Aside from that, you may also want to consider how much other landlords charge rentals in the neighboring area. Because if you set an unreasonably high rent amount to compare to others, you might end up struggling to find the right tenant who is willing to agree to your terms.

The landlord may ask a standard set of questions to ask their prospective tenants who are interested to view the property. This may be considered the first step of the screening process. So, here are some of the few screening questions to be asked so you can evaluate their potential as a renter:

• Do you have pets, and how many?
• How many people would occupy the unit?
• Why are you moving and when do you want to move to?
• Do you currently rent? If so, where?
• What kind of work do you do?
• What is your rough estimated monthly income?
• Are you willing to sign a year rental agreement?
• Would you be able to pay a security deposit? (state the amount)