Archive for April, 2008
In today’s time, owning a home especially in a metro or in developing cities has become too expensive and unaffordable. This makes people look out for homes or apartments on rent. On the other hand, if you have the luxury of owning two homes or an extra space, renting it can be a good decision. Also, it helps you in getting an extra monthly income without putting in much effort.
When planning to rent your place, you should be very careful with the terms of lease as it was not meant to be a rental property originally. You may take the following few steps to draft a secured way of renting property.
Hire an Agent:
You must look into hiring an agent in order to rent your property as it would make things lot easier. The agent would be help in advertising your space and in scouting for potential tenants. A rental agent charges fee according to services availed and so it is suggested that before signing any contract with him/ her, you should be very clear with the fee structure.
An agent may offer services at a charge of either half month or full month fee which simply implies half and full respectively of a month’s rent that you charge from the tenant. It could be charged in any of the three ways:
Charging the whole fee only from the landlord Charging only the tenant with the whole fee Charging the fee by splitting it between the landlord and tenant
Services of an Agent:
The services provided by rental agents could be very useful and can save a lot of time and energy for you. The agent would be responsible for:
Advertising your listing or space Reviewing potential applications Credit check of the potential tenant Calling past references Verifying employment details
The agent, after performing all the checks, would recommend to you the tenant’s application and you may either give a go ahead or refuse the application if not convinced. He/she would be instrumental in deriving all such important information and in helping you to lease your property in a secured manner.
If you believe that you don’t need the services from an outside source and can do the job yourself, take extra caution. Though leasing out the home would still require hiring of an external agency to conduct the credit checks.
When not hiring the agent:
You must follow all the steps to ensure that you land up offering your place to a credible tenant. The extra space should become a source of only an extra income not troubles. Advertise the space well.
Make sure you perform a credit and employment check Pay thorough attention to the applicant’s employment history and his/ her ability to pay the monthly rent on time. In case, you find the record unfavorable, do not lease you house to him/her.
Feedback from past landlord You must make efforts to get feedback from last landlord of the applicant. If the review is not good, look for another applicant.
After Selecting the Tenant
Duration of the Rent:
Since it is not easy to terminate the contract by both the parties, be careful while preparing it. So, as soon as you find your tenant, next step should be to decide the duration of the lease.
Furnished or Unfurnished Home:
Also, you have to decide if you want to lease your property well furnished or without the furniture and this should be discussed between both the parties in earlier stages of finalizing the contract.
Inform your Neighbors:
To avoid problems, keep your neighbors informed of the tenants coming in. They may get confused seeing strangers around, so it’s important to let them know of the new people joining the apartment.
Additional Important Tips:
Check mortgage documents to review restrictions of renting.
Check rental rates of similar properties.
Prepare a rental contract as legal concerns are important.
Accept security deposits and advance from the tenants.
Walk-through of the property with tenants is important.
By: Deepika B
Many people prefer to invest in real estate industry in the form of purchasing a property and then giving it on a rent to tenants. Though offering a property on rent could be a lucrative income-generation option for a landlord, the entire task is not so easy. In fact, getting good tenant could really be a difficult job sometimes, if not most of the times.
Tenant background check is possibly the best option to attract good tenants to your property. It is only through detailed inspection you can be rest assured of having good tenants. There are several background checking agencies that perform background check for tenants.
You must contact such agencies and forward them the responsibilities of background investigation in order to minimize the hassles and maximize the benefit. When your hired agency runs a background check on your behalf, you will get the detailed background report for your tenant. In this detailed report, you will get almost all relevant credit report of your tenant. You can verify if your prospective tenant has any financial bankruptcy in the past or not.
In the tenant background investigation report, you will not only get information related to bankruptcy, but also you will get detailed information related to employment background, savings report, residential history and many other relevant financial details that are actually required before you rent your beloved property to someone else on rent.
It is not very uncommon to see many nice people who love your property equally and take a real good care of your property as a tenant. But it is also not very uncommon to see some people are just the opposite and they handle your property in a troubled manner.
The second group of people damage the property, destroy belongings in the property and thus you may not wish to get such type of tenants in your property. With the help of effective background check, you can make yourself free from such unscrupulous and hazardous tenants.
You only need to pay a nominal fee to get the tenant background check done. Many reputed agencies have their website on the internet. So by visiting their websites, you can also register for the background check for your tenant against a nominal fee. Be sure that a prospective tenant does not really mind paying for the report. If not, the tenant might not be the one you are looking for.
So when you do tenant background check, you will only gain more and lose nothing at all. Hence just don’t take any risk and go for background check for tenant.
By: Adam Labno
