Are you tired of fooling with entitled, deadbeat, looky-loo prospective renters who lie and don't value your time? Today is a great day!

I've talked about my process piecemeal here/there and at the Mr. LL Convention. For anyone who is interested, I'll share it here. This saves me time and headaches and has me with a vacancy rate of less than 3% for the year (and back as far as I keep stats...2013). It has evolved a bit over time and I am still tweaking it but this WORKS!

*** S i d's Hassle-Free/Worry-Free Tenant Screening Process ***

1) When a property comes vacant, I immediately advertise on the Zillow syndicate. If it's an eviction or the resident is being contentious (rare), I don't. I also bribe current tenant with $100 referral bonus and $50 "say good things about us, keep the house nice for showing" bonus.

2) The ad contains instructions for "To View" and "To Apply" with links to my website.

3) Our website has a "Tour Request" form. It's really pre-screening. Asks the basics: full name (including middle), income that can be documented, how many animals (don't say 'Pets!' ESAs aren't pets!) and what kind, reason for moving, email and phone #, and how soon they want to move.

4) I use the results of the form to run a pre-screening.

* Background check: Missouri has online court records on CaseNet. A lot get DQ'd here...evictions, violent felons, recent drug charges, pattern of violations over extended period.

* Income. Must be minimum of 3x the rent. Anything below is automatic DQ. Rents are low in my town. Adjust as needed for your area.

* Reason for moving. If they trash talk the LL or say something really silly...no go!

* Moving timeline... N,o I won't hold this apartment for you 3 months! I'll file the email address later so if I have a vacancy in 2 months then they'll get an email blast. Keep this info: it's valuable!

5) If they DQ, I don't response. If they pass...

*Vacant house: I send them a "Good news, 123 Anywhere Ave is ready to tour....key is in the lock box on the front door....combo is 1234....say Hi to our handyman Joe if he's there finishing up a few small items. Apply online at (website)....$19.95 per adult age 18 and up." This means they get to tour NOW while other LLs make them wait. It also keeps them from stealing or damaging, knowing that "Joe" could show up at any time. The worst thing I've had in 4 years of doing this is someone did a #2 in the toilet and didn't flush.

* Occupied house: same idea, but my bribed tenants allow them in.

NOTE: I have not talked to this person yet. All calls go to voicemail and get text or email responses. This means I haven't heard any 'stories' or been asked if we 'work with people' on the deposit. I am too busy working with good tenants to work with poorly qualified prospects. Don't worry, I'll talk to the good ones eventually. I know some of you insist on that and I do too, but I would rather talk to 1-2 well-qualified, cooperative people vs. 100 entitled, deadbeat, looky-loos.

6) If they tour and respond via the website application, we process it fully. They pay the fee to a third party that does the credit pull for us and emails us PDF copies of the app, as well as photo ID (required) and pay stubs/income documentation (required). We do all the usual stuff to weed out the fake land lords/employers/fake pay stubs. That's a separate post!

7) Assuming they qualify...I text/email: "Congratulations! Your application is complete. We'll need $XXX deposited to reserve this unit for you. I'll be in touch soon." They have to deposit the funds and sign our Property Reservation Agreement that spell out the deposited funds are a Holding FEE (non-refundable for ANY reason once we finish application approval process).

** Note: I did NOT say their app is approved. We have one more step....

8) I contact them personally. Yes, NOW I talk to the person who has established that they have money, good references, good background, decent or better credit, and who cooperate. I set up an appointment to come view their current home and take pictures of their animals. NOW I get a chance to see if they're faking me out. If they are disagreeable, uncooperative, sketchy....we cancel and will refund. It's very rare to find this, though. Remember, this is a good person I screened pretty carefully and who is willing to go the extra mile.

9) In-home inspection. Takes 2 minutes. I see the pets; I smell the home. This step will reveal more truth than any application or talk you will ever have with them or any of their references, guaranteed. Your house will look, smell, and sound like their current house within 4 weeks of them moving in. If you reject all 9 of my other steps....DO THIS ONE!

10) Assuming all goes well, we sign the Property Reservation Agreement. Their deposited funds are now non-refundable if they back out for any reason. Keys will be turned over on move-in day when we do the walk thru and sigh the lease.

This process has saved me TONS of time. There is little to no risk of damage/squatters. I get rented quickly and don't waste gas or time on no-shows.

I enjoy seeing the history of all the pieces of your ideas coming together to form a clear and organized path. A working system that is sure to save time.

Sid - Thanks for posting. Pretty much the same process I follow now.

Question though - do you get past LL's that aren't willing to cooperate? If so, how do you handle? Does it mean an auto denial for the prospect, or something different?

I've adopted a very similar process and I love it! You'll have all of the naysayers chime in about how it won't work for them, or how its "lazy", or how you/we should just hire a real estate broker if we can't be bothered rushing out to show a property at any given time/day.

These naysayers are all stuck in their ways. They're stuck in the old fashioned way of doing business, which is great if that's what they're comfortable with. But to these naysayers, I challenge them to try this methodology ONE time and THEN comment about the results.

Thanks SID for posting this. I have progressed some with getting places rented. Started out with individual showings....moved to open houses....and now on to lock box showings. Will still do an open house if I am going to be there anyways touching up paint etc.

I think I asked you this before and forgot to write it down, what website builder did you use and have you found a decent credit/background company? I am thinking about giving Jeffery’s service on this site a try.

Thank you so much for posting this, Sid!

We are currently prescreening for our duplex and recently had a prospect contact us via Zillow. I looked up her name and she had some kind of "health coaching" business, fancy website, etc. I thought, great, she seems like she can pay the rent.

We show her the place and she asks to prepay the rent for 6 months and asks us to shorten the lease from 1 year to 6 months.

No.

Hi all... I will give my web process if interested, but not on here as they are somewhat of a competitor to one of this site's sponsors.

For tenants without a past land lord....great question, and this is one area that each LL must answer for him/herself. This post is NOT about specific screening criteria, although I did list some as examples. For me, if a tenant has no LL history or only one, I will accept with increased security deposit.

I also ALWAYS inspect where they are currently living, even if it's a parent's or relative's house. Yes, I want to see their room. If they disrespect Ma and Pa's or Aunt Tilly's house....no thanks! I don't take folks staying in extended stay hotels either. Nope....that risk is a no-go. If they live out of town, I try to find someone local (Realtor, handyman) who will go by their house and send me a report. This is harder, but it can be done. 90% of my applicants come from in-town or surrounding area where I can get too within a short drive. You'll have to flesh out your own policy on this, but don't neglect it.

Sid, great job!

Showing has been one element that I can't automate. I started trying open house showing. Just a pain when you have 2 or 3 vacancies that are 20 minutes apart.

Sid. Thanks very much for sharing. It is nice to know screening and lockbox show work.

Sid [MO] this is a GREAT post, YAY, i need to learn more stuff yet hehehe, thanks for sharing.

Sid thanks for sharing. I have to admit implementing some of these ideas I heard from you in May has been on my to do list since then. I have been "to busy" since then to do it, and no vacancies so I didn't worry about it.

Sorry for the delay.... and thank you to Jeffrey for giving permission to discuss some specifics.

For pre-screening, I have a website designed and powered by Weebly. I got their Basic package that costs $8/month and includes 1 year of domain registration and site hosting. I work in IT, but mostly green-screen mainframe stuff, not the fancy web-stuff. Their design software is easy to use, "drag and drop", what you see is what you get! Too easy for anyone to use and update. If all else fails, hire a middle-schooler for $20 and he/she will teach you how!

For application, I use rentapplication d o t net. They have a free option for just the application, but I used the option to have the tenant pay the web site for a credit report. They also offer eviction and background reporting for an extra charge. You can add any extra fees you want as well. It's very easy to customize for your needs/wants. They have secure processing built-in so you can get SSNs, digital signature/release to verify info, etc. You get a PDF copy of their credit report, the application, and whatever documents you want them to upload. I require photo ID and paystubs. Download, unzip, review...takes a few minutes at most. Forward the release to land lords/employers. Easy cheesy!

Sid,

Sid, I'm playing around with this and just found it easier to work with google forms to get my pre-screening app done. Basically, I'm going to set up my full application on google forms and then have them go onto a provider I have similar to the one you have to authorize release of credit and criminal background. I can embed the google form into my website using html code provided by google.

My question is this: How are you capturing SSN's? I would normally get these on the paper app, but with the services, they provide directly and you don't get them.

Sid,

Thanks!

I hired my high school nephew to build my website back when people said "Why would you need a website" 20+ years ago.

It works for me day and night, 7 days a week while I played with my kids and had peaceful dinner with the fam.

75% of our applications come in from the website.

I see people drive up to our homes with the Homes list printed off the website.

It is the cheapest, most effective "employee" I have.

AND 97% of folks START home shopping online.

BRAD

I have started using the Zillow application and credit report and have been pleased with it. It's a great for pre-screening and I like getting the report without having to handle the application fee. Applicants pay $29 for credit/background check which is good for 30 days. They can apply for different properties on Zillow using the one report.

If they pass the prescreening on Zillow, I have them fill out a brief application with some additional information and get their photo ID and income documents

Sid, I like seeing your whole step by step process - really helpful.

I plan to start doing home visits. Will be a challenge as a number of my residents move from out of town.

Great post, Sid, thank you!