Ultimate Guide to Screening and Keeping High-Quality Tenants Every Landlord Needs!

Are you having trouble with your tenant?

Welcome back to Inside Uplift Property Management where we're going to talk to you about how to avoid those tenant problems by screening and retaining high quality tenants. We know that finding a long lasting tenant that is going to take care of your home and pay rent on time every month and not destroy something and have unlimited maintenance requests coming in can be difficult really it's it's hard to find that but using proven techniques and through all of our experience you know here at uplift we man we do over 1,700 applications a year for our properties we learn those techniques to find those red flags and pitfalls in screening to find that highquality tenant

In California we get highly regulated on how we find and Screen a tenant what we can do is look for those red flags and have a lot of experience and we can set some requirements for that property but what we can't do is violate fair housing law and just discriminate based on you know ethnicity race gender even a lot of things like criminal history and income sources and things like that that get really sticky that we need to make sure that we have clear guidelines to follow fair housing and treat every application the same way every time

This is really inside uplift Property Management here this is what our team uses every single day when they're going going through application screenings we do it on a little scorecard and we kind of like our our numbers low so when we come through here we say all right here's our applicant score total right? and we want every to be a one if it's a one that means you scored perfect right so we go through good Fair poor and then things that we just deny straight up on that specific reason alone and so we go through we have income credit score rental history and then we even look at collection types right? and so income you know that's pretty basic credit score everybody sees that you can call your residential history but honestly most of the time they don't answer or they don't tell you the truth or they don't tell you the whole truth right? so then we actually like to look at our Collections and looking at what types of collections right? is it just medical bills that are outstanding or student loans and those kind of things that are dragging you down or is it Past due credit card is it rent owed to a previous landlord is it that they don't pay their utility bill like they've got Cox and Verizon and you know you know San Diego Gas and Electric do they have all of those utility bills that are outstanding cuz those are huge red flags for us and those actually lead to a lot of those automatic denials of what types of collections so sometimes somebody even has that 675 credit score but they have $2,000 in collections with utilities that's a big red flag for us cause if they're not paying their utilities the option of them not paying their rent is a lot higher of a chance

So we talked about the scorecard as a whole and we do want to look at it as a whole but diving into income requirements is really basic and this is some of the basic stuff we have right so minimum of 2.5 times the income right and you see people talk about oh is it 2.5 times their gross or should I be looking at their net income how should I be looking at that here we use their gross income 2 and a half times is our minimum standard right obviously if you have a better income ratio then you're going to score better on our application we also like to look at the consistency of that income are they changing jobs all the time is this something that they just started did we just get an offer letter and it's not even a job contract at this point all those things matter on whether or not that income is qualified income or if it's just them making a fraudulent claim

Usually we have a minimum credit score of 600 obviously we can change that for a different properties you know I'm not going to expect a a fancy five-bedroom mansion house that's have all has the luxury amenities to it I'm not going to trust that to somebody with a 600 credit score right but if I have a studio or some area and that's a little bit less desirable I might accept a little bit lower credit score but we try to stick at a minimum of 600 and then going making sure that we go over those collections again making sure that they don't have those utility bills making sure that we have um a clear idea of what their overall monthly finances should look like so that they they have that capability of paying that rent that matches up with their income requirement

This one's a little bit questionable in the industry as property managers nowadays right we still go and call all of those residential history people that somebody puts on their application but how often do they just put a random friend that is going to act like their landlord and they're just going to say oh give this glowing review and talk all about how amazing these tenants were right or you actually get a property management company and they never answer the phone they don't respond to the email verification requests and you just get no answer or if they do answer they only answer just the minimum basic number of questions of is there an amount due you know they're not going to ask anything they're not going to answer anything subjective at all because they don't want liability on themselves right? so residential history while it's an important factor that people like to think about it's something that we really have to take a nuanced approach to in today's market

So after we've screened and found that highquality applicant we've moved them into your house they've been living there what do I have to do to retain that tenant to make sure that they keep that lasting income for your property long term? and that starts even before they move in so you're going to make sure that your communication is really accurate with them upfront and then you're going to want to make sure that you take care of those tenants throughout the entire lease that's where a professional property manager really is a benefit to you even though you don't necessarily see more money coming in they're going to help expand the lifetime of that tenant in your house and some of those things that we do you know like we said communication being on top of those maintenance requests even though sometimes it might be something that's not necessary we want to do something nice for the tenant make sure that they feel like their the house or their unit is their home right and that they feel comfortable there and then as I've spoken about in the past we have a cool off market right now sometimes you know we've got to eight eight units in this building and they're all one-bedrooms and some of them are renting for 900 and I was getting that you know $22,000 you know last year but then today I'm trying to Market one and it's I have it marketed at 1,800 and I'm not getting any contacts right and I I might actually have to look at price decreases on this type of property so that I can retain those tenants you know offer them $50 less for signing a year lease right? in a cool off Market it favors the landlord to have that year-long contract and retain that tenant avoid the costs of vacancy avoid the costs of all the turnover maintenance that you have you know carpets painting cleaning all of those things that come while losing the income retaining the tenant is the most important thing to do to increase that longevity of your investment

To wrap it up for today we love having a process behind everything that we do we are a data driven business so we have data driven processes to have that screening process done right and then have the the handholding and attention to detail for your tenant while they are in your unit so that we can help retain that tenant communication processes and actually getting things done is what sets Uplift Property Management apart from the rest and I know that if you are implementing some of those systems and processes to make sure that you are giving that attention and staying dedicated to your property you will be able to find those great tenants and extend the lifespan of that tenant in your property and make more money like we all want to.