Some of you might remember that I am fairly hands on with my screening process (and unfortunately resistant to change). At the convention, one of the speakers inspired me to streamline my process a bit and since the last 2 vacancies made me work more than I wanted to I am now open to suggestions (sometimes you do have to beat a dead horse).

If you would, can you describe how your process works after you start to advertise the rental. I know some of you have a pre-qualification form that people fill out before showing the unit.

What questions are you asking? What are you doing after they "pass" the pre-qualification? What are you doing if they don't qualify? Is it a google doc form or some other way?

Are you using a calendar app to schedule appointments? Which one? How's it working?

The more details the better. Thanks in advance - ya'll are the best.

I really enjoyed seeing you folks at the convention.

It was great to see you, bonanza.

I begin by putting in the ads one email address as the only contact for inquiries.

EVERY email that comes to that gmail address get an automatically generated vacation responder message with a brief "thank you for interest / answer these to get started" message. It includes a link to my google form pre-application questionnaire.

Many of them don't ever complete it, so that thins out the numbers you need to respond to.

If you know a computer programmer, (or know how yourself)they can set it up so the answers from the submissions go into a spreadsheet for easy viewing.

If you are really tech savvy, (like someone on this Q&A who did it for me), there can be an automatically generated response to each inquiry. Either "your info's been received / someone will contact you" type message or a rejection type.

Search for “Automation” in the subject line and you’ll find my Google form example.

How my system works: I advertise online, the prospect emails and receives an instant email reply with property info, a walkthrough video, and a link to my form with instructions on how to fill out.

If they don’t pass pre-screening, they get an instant automated “thanks but no thanks email”

If they do pass, they get an instant, automated personalized email letting them know well be in touch.

When they have a showing scheduled, I mark it on my calendar. If they pass prescreening and after a 2 day delay if they aren’t on my calendar, the automated system sends a follow up email to let them know to reach out to schedule a showing.

Jason,

How do you get google forms to pull in your house info? Or is that a bit of tech that is above my pay grade?

SELECT PROPERTY THAT YOU'RE INTERESTED IN:

*

I haven't found a good way to 100% automate my pre-qual steps, because one of the steps is a quick background search on our state's online free court case website (CaseNet).

Other than that, I have 5 questions:

1) Documentable Income

2) Current housing situation (own, rent, living w/family or friends, hotel, other)

3) Reason for moving

4) Earliest move-in date

5) Ever been evicted or left owing a LL money?

Now they can LIE on those obviously, but if they are honest and answer something that fails my criteria, then they saved me the time and effort. The idea is having a "quick 'n dirty" method to reject the patently unqualified. The liars get weeded out in the full app process later, after they pay some $ for my efforts.

It takes me about 10 seconds to review a pre-qual app, other than the CaseNet search. That can take a minute or two depending on the name (Joe Smith gets a lot of hits....)

Works fast enough for me. If I ever need to do 100s of those daily, I'll hire someone (my kids) for $15/hour or something.

Well I got a google forms set up that I like. I wish I could have it select a house like Jason's form does but I made a short question of "Which house are you interested in?" which will do the same thing I guess.

One thing I did add a box that was just a picture of the fair housing logo with a statement " All homes are offered without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, sex, disability or familial status."

We don't prequalify, but we do have the application automated (thanks to Appfolio).

I don't schedule with them either. Once they are prequalified they get a text back with the time for the next 2 open houses. I started doing it this way when there were more applicants than properties available, if it ever slows down I might go back to individual showings.