Landlord Tenant Article #1:

How to Avoid the Nightmare Tenant

One of the most common issues I see in my practice is the Landlord who finds him or herself in a situation with a challenging tenant who can’t or won’t pay rent and refuses to leave. If you are a landlord and find yourself in that situation, my advice is to either file a complaint for restitution in your local magistrate court or hire an attorney to handle the process for you. This article however, is not for you.

This article is for the landlord who is looking for a tenant and struggling to figure out whether or not to rent your well-cared for and beloved property to a particular candidate. The good news is that if you follow the simple steps I outline, you will almost never encounter or have to deal with a nightmare tenant.

Step 1: Perform a background check. Most important here is to obtain from your candidate their most recent landlord as a reference and simply call that landlord, and ask the reference what its like to be the candidate’s landlord. Ask questions like: does the tenant pay? On time? Is the tenant a troublemaker? A partier? This is, by far the most valuable tool in your toolbox. Don’t skip it. If your candidate can’t or won’t give you their current landlord as a reference, this is a huge red flag, and I recommend you find another candidate, or proceed with extreme caution.

Step 2: Perform a credit check. This is simple, and should be incorporated into your application process with the fee being covered by your tenant’s application fee. You can always offer to credit those monies against the tenant’s first month rent if you want. Here again, don’t skip this step.

Step 3: Look at your candidate’s car. Yes, you read that right. If you are a conscientious landlord, you take good care of your property and you want to maintain it in good condition. It doesn’t take more than one time of having a nightmare tenant tear up your property to realize you can lose a lot of your profit in making unnecessary repairs and cleaning up after a tenant that doesn’t take care of your baby. Looking at and inside of their car will show you generally how they take care of things. The patina of their car will soon be the patina of your property.

You will notice that the three steps above are simple, inexpensive, and take very little time. Trust me on this. Follow these steps and you will avoid nearly all of the risk of getting tied up with a nightmare tenant.

If you would like to have the background/credit check performed by a professional, our office can do the work for you for a relatively small fee.

Remember, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Hope this helps. If you get stuck, give us a call and we will get you scheduled for a consultation and get you back on the right track. We are at your service.

Matt and the Team