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This is probably one of the most important steps, if not THE MOST important step to having good tenants and getting your property back in the same state you let it out, but so many investors just overlook this step or implement it loosly.
There aren’t powerful enough words in the dictionary to explain how important this is. This is where everything starts for the better or worse...
You need to screen your tenants very carefully, scrutinize
information you receive, look for holes in the information provided to
you, check references, and much more. In the process diagram you will get more information about screening and I also suggest that you read the E-book Avoiding Nightmare Tenants , it has a lot of valuable information.
In the workshop we go over all the pitfalls and all the steps, but
there is one step that is a mystery to me why investors and letting
agents alike don’t put enough emphasis on - and that is -- the
listening part.
You can learn so much from listening to a person. Listening will
give you all the indication of what type of person you are dealing
with, what stage in their life they are, whether they are stable or
not, etc. By listening, you can understand whether you are dealing with
a potential good or bad tenant. Yes, there are conmen and professional
squatters, but by far they are screened and identified through the
process that we teach.
The part of listening to the potential tenant, connecting with your
potential customer in simple conversation and understanding what they
are all about … is so crucial that it is hard to explain, but by far
and most investors and letting agents underuse and misunderstand this
step in the screening process.
You don’t need to become their friends, you need to ask the right
questions and listen to who they are, what they are all about, where
they work, why they work there, how long have they been there, why they
are leaving their current place of rental, whether they are happy with
their work and so forth.
People love talking about themselves; smart sales people, let them and learn from it.
Without going into the whole screening process, which will take more
than a post can contain, one major secret is to ask the correct
questions and then to listen to your potential tenant.
I think it is time to tell another secret – property letting in the
residential buy-to-let market is a PEOPLES business and you need to be
good at this. But the good news is, that it is easy and with a little
practice it can become very natural. You don’t need to be talkative,
nor very outgoing. PEOPLES business is about LISTENING to people and
understanding people.
Now that we have gone over all the basics we will talk about more
in-depth issues. In my next post I will be speaking about: How to
Identify Tenants Turning from Good to Bad.
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