Pre-Screening Prospects – How To Decide Who To Show Your Rental Properties To
Pre-Screening Prospects – How Do I Decide Who To Show My Rental To?
Landlords ask me all the time what is the best way to figure out who is actually a good risk and how they can stop wasting their time showing a property to people who don’t qualify.
My answer is to pre-screen all prospects. A prospect is anyone who wants to see your property.
What Is Pre-Screening?
Pre-screening is an easy way to “vet” everyone who calls and wants to see your rental property.
I am very selective about who gets access to my rental properties. For my vacant rentals, I want to control who is in and out of them. Why should I let anyone who wants to just look at the house into to see it? This increases the wear and tear and increases the chances that someone will return later and strip the property.
Sometimes I have a tenant who gives notice to vacate and they have kept the property in immaculate condition. This gives me the opportunity to list the property, show it and get it rented before the current tenant moves out. I want to inconvenience my current tenant as little as possible so pre-screening is very important in these cases.
Screening applicants is a stressful and challenging endeavor. You typically only have to screen tenants when you have a vacant home or a home that is about to be vacant.