OwnerSecrets.com

I need to rent out my dad’s house in Tucson, Arizona. What do I need to do to rent out my house? What are the steps that I should take. Anything I should avoid? Thanks for all your help.

Well the marketing of your home is easy, use Craigslist. I would say that you should check references carefully and also do a credit check. You can have the prospect pay for the credit check when he fills out a rental application. Make sure that your rental application authorizes a credit check! Google the appropriate rental apps for your city and state.

Get the house clean and in good shape to rent. Clean the carpets, paint the walls, etc. There is lots more tips on how to rent out your house on this blog that you can search for.

If you’re in a hurry, hire a property management company to do it for you. They charge anywhere from 7% to 12% a month. A good property management company is easily worth the 10% a month fee. Tell the property manager that you want copies of the rental application, credit check, lease agreement, and any other letters and emails that are sent to and from the property but don’t tell them why just say you keep very good records. Once you get the copies, study them and learn the wording. After about a year, you can let go of the property management company and manage the home yourself. This is a great way to learn the ropes. You might decide after seeing all the work involved to retain the property management company.

Technorati Tags: credit check, how to rent out your house, lease agreement, property management company, rental application

My friend Erick Blackwelder has posted a helpful video on how to screen tenants for your investment property.

The most powerful words you can use to setup a healthy relationship are “Let me tell you how I work.”

Say it to yourself in the mirror as many times as necessary until you get comfortable saying it.

Give them an application. Tell them to fill it out fully. Tell them, “Be sure to put down the names and phone numbers of previous landlords because I will call them for their recommendation and their reference. That’s not negotiable.”

In your application you need to have included a clause that gives you permission to pull their credit report from the major credit reporting agencies.

There is usually about a $30 fee for running a credit report and so you will need to tell the prospect to bring with them a check for $30 for the credit check when they return to you a completed application.

Now Erick, I love the guy, no disrespect Erick, but you’ve been drinking too much of that mean juice. In California, and in my market which is the Central Valley, if you tried to demand that a prospect pay you with auto-debit or look elsewhere, EVERYONE would look elsewhere. You would never have a tenant for your property. You might found one after a year, but your ROI would be terrible because your property would be sitting vacant far too long.

Come on Erick, be honest. You’re an older guy, you’ve rented to many good tenants over the years before their was such a thing as auto-debit. Now I know you’re not saying that you never should have rented to anyone in the past that didn’t do auto-debit. So why do you recommend others do that now? It’s not realistic. You have to get your property rented as fast as possible and doing something, anything, that would make even a month or two go by longer than normal for a vacancy can be the difference between a profitable property and one that is losing money.

Try and get someone to sign up with your auto-debit method but if they refuse and want to pay by check each month, then that’s fine to. I know of a lot of people with excellent credit that have made very good tenants that just don’t want a computer to automatically pull money from their bank account, especially for a “big ticket” item like the rent because they worry about over drawing their checking account. This is a very real concern when dealing with an auto-debit for something as big as rent.

With that said, check out the video from my “hard nose” friend Erick, it’s good stuff.

Duration : 0:6:20

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Technorati Tags: auto debit, buying investment property, credit check, credit report, landlords, major credit reporting agencies, pull their credit report, running a credit report, screening tenants