How to get any place you want: a landlord’s bulletproof guide to applying for a rental.

by Niek on February 10, 2012

Beat all other applicants by following a couple simple steps.

It’s that time of the year again, people are looking to move. After reviewing a ton of potential tenants I want to give renters an insight into how a landlord evaluates potential tenants. You can use a couple little tricks to make yourself look great and move to the top of the list.

In the last year I have processed at least 60 phone calls, done more than 20 showings and processed about 10 applications. I figured it would be a good time to tell you what would immediately make me want to (not) rent to you. The key to a landlord’s heart is in addressing his or her fears before they ask. Here are some examples of those fears:

  • You won’t pay your rent.
  • You will break things in the house.
  • You will be a nuisance to the neighbors.
  • You will want to move out soon. (I.e., because you move jobs a lot or because you are looking to buy in the future)
  • You will be a winy person constantly complaining about little things after moving in.

STEP 1: LEAVE A GOOD VOICEMAIL MESSAGE

I always let calls go to voicemail first, as part of screening step one. I only want to deal with people who are actually interested and polite, and those who are leave a polite message.

Make sure to tell me a little bit about yourself, like “Hi, this is Joanne. I am interested in your house on Rental Rd. My husband and I are looking for a place starting March 1st as we are trying to move out of Small Town into your city to reduce the length of our commute. Please give me a call back at 123-4567, I am available all day today. Thank you!”

BOOM! I already love you. Good story, left a number and time and name and reason and date to move in.

Here is an example of an actual voicemail I received yesterday: “Yo Hello? Hello? Yo this is Bruce, I want to see your house. Call me back at 123-1234.”

The message sounded rude and with 10 other applicants in my voicemail, you really think I want to call YOU back?

Note: Yes you can email me too, but make sure to leave a phone number. There is no way I can get a good “feel” for a tenant by email and will never host a showing just based on your emails.

STEP 2: THE CALL-BACK

This process is key for me as this is where I need you to address most of my fears.

A. Are you a nice person? Be friendly! I asked a guy once if he was looking for a place to move in with some friends or with his family to which he replied: “I don’t have any friends, I only have people I know.” followed with “You better call me back soon, OK?” Ehh, not ok.

B. How is your credit? I expect dings on your credit, but explain the situation to me. You went into foreclosure? No problem, everybody seems to have one of those these days. But bankruptcy? Why? Don’t make me ask first, tell me about trying to get rid of Capital One harassing you about a debt from 2004 and wanting to start with a clean slate, that makes some sense. But in all honesty, if you declared bankruptcy to get out of a small claims court judgement and you tell me, I won’t rent to you no matter how good your story is. Tenants who know how to game the legal system are risky and expensive.

If your credit score is just low “in general” I want to know how that happened. Co-signing is my most accepted excuse, especially if you feel like it was a stupid mistake. That means you are a nice person with bad judgement who hopefully learned their lesson. But if you got your car repossessed and tell me how it was all the dealers fault because this car was a piece of crap anyway and blah blah blah, I’m out.

C. How is your rental history? Any eviction is an immediate “no” for me, but good rental history will make up for bad credit in my opinion. If you consider your rent a higher priority than your credit card bill, I have less to worry about.

D. Employment history. I love anybody with a long term job at the same place. I don’t even care much about your specific salary. If you have been an assistant for 5 years at the same law office I will high five your application. It means you are trusted by professionals and are unlikely to move “up” in the rental market or buy a house anytime soon.

Be honest too. A bad move was that of an applicant last year claiming to be an “in home caretaker” (who are notoriously underpaid at almost minimum wage) making exactly 5,000 per month (round numbers set off red flags). When asked for a supervisor phone number to verify income I got a “Ehhh I don’t know if he is going to be ok with that.” Which makes me think you are lying. And if you lied about this, what else are you hiding?

E. Who is moving in? Tell me about your situation. I love spouses or long term boyfriends/girlfriends. I love people with young children because I expect them to stay long. What I don’t like is “me and some of my college girlfriends”. I don’t remember any college house where people (1) stayed for a long time and (2) were drama free. I do NOT want to deal with girl 1 moving out because girl 3 slept with her ex-boyfriend and now the rent is only going to be half because her mom refuses to pay for just one more month because summer is coming up and girlfriend 4 is moving colleges because girlfriend 3 keeps on bringing over her scary boyfriend. Life is too short to deal with phone calls like that. :)

Also tell me about pets. And know my fears, which are (1) pee stains in the carpet, (2) scratches on the doors and (3) barking in the yard. “I have a 5 year old cat who has been housetrained for years.” is great, “My boyfriend has just gotten this pit-mix puppy.” is not so great.

STEP 3: THE SHOWING

We get to meet in person. You have made it past the first screening hurdle. But keep in mind, the landlord might be showing the house to many other people, so refresh his or her memory about who you are.

Be on time, look presentable. This is not a job interview, but please, don’t come rolling in 20 minutes late while blasting the subwoofer in your orange Impala on 22s with your hat on sideways.

Bring everybody who would be on the lease. I want to meet everybody who is going to move in. “My boyfriend had to work” is not cool. “My boyfriend had to work, but I love the place, can I bring him by tomorrow?” is perfectly ok.

Ask questions! This might sound counterintuitive, but I want to know what you care about. Someone who doesn’t ask questions looks a little secretive to me. How are the neighbors? Can we put in a doggie door? Can my cousin move in later this year? None of those are worse than someone not asking any questions at all.

Don’t scare me. Examples of bad ideas:

  • A couple came over with 15 of their church friends who were all scattered around the front yard when I pulled up.
  • A single mom with 5 kids who were more destructive than a mid-size hurricane.
  • Another couple kept asking us whether we were going to heat treat the house because “their friends” had bed bugs and they did not want to have them too. Are you kidding me? You have friends with bed bugs and you tell me? Don’t you realize that just having your friends over for a visit could result in a 4,000 dollar bill for a pesticide treatment?
  • A guy kept on calling to see if he could move in today or tomorrow, because “he has cash”. Every time I mention a credit check he backpedaled.
  • A girl wanted to see the breaker box to see if there was room for an extra electrical circuit, because her boyfriend might need one. Except for setting up a pot-farm I have no idea why he would need that.

STEP 4. THE APPLICATION

Most applicants just fill out the application, often poorly. And if you do that, yours is just one of many applications I received. But there are a couple things you can do to blow me out of the water and immediately move to the top of the pile.

If you love the place during the showing, tell me. Ask me for an application and whether you can fill it out right away. Do so and hand it back to me and include:

  • A check for the application fee
  • A check for the deposit in case I decide to take you on as a tenant
  • A recent print-out of your credit report
  • A copy of some items that show income details, like a recent paystub, bank statement, W2 or tax return.
  • A couple phone numbers to call like your current landlord, your boss at work or a reference.

If you do some or all of that, congratulations! You have just made it to the top of the pile. I can run your application and check your references all before breakfast and call you the next minute to set up an appointment to hand you the keys. You made yourself look organized, did your best to impress me and saved me time on top of that. What else could a landlord wish for?

- Credit for illustration: jscreation –  

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Comparison of Online Checking Accounts

by Niek on February 6, 2012

In a follow up to yesterdays post on deciding between online and brick and mortar banks, here is a comparison of online banks you might consider.

To choose the right online bank you need to find out what is important to you. Things you can take into consideration:

- How do I cash checks? (By mail or smartphone)

The main reason I prefer smartphone is that I don’t trust the postal service. A check lost by USPS is no problem if it was my friend’s contribution to yesterdays lunch, but the problem gets a lot bigger when you have to ask tenants to write you a second check for last months rent. That would not fly. Especially since some banks will actually take their rent money out of their account when they use bill pay to pay me. It takes 90 days of not cashing the check before their bank will refund the money. And even if they did trust me, I doubt most tenants have the ability to pay the rent “twice” while they wait for the refund.

An important thing to ask your future bank is what their smartphone deposit limits are. They are often very low to start with, which is a pain for checks the size of rent checks,  but they will let you upgrade them if your account is in good standing for a while. So take that into account and don’t expect “switching banks” is going to be a 1 week process.

- What is the interest rate?

Often landlords keep a substantial amount of working capital in an account.

– Do I get free ATM use?

It is not often I have to pay someone in cash, but I hate paying those 3 dollar fees to pull out 40 dollars.

– When can I contact the customer service department?

This is actually a perk for an online bank. Where most brick and mortar banks close both their buildings and their phone lines after business hours, some online banks are available 24/7.

Comparison

To make life easier for you I have omitted any banks with monthly “maintenance fees” or “account minimums” (I’m looking at you HSBC!). So any of these choices will be free to open and maintain. All provide a free debit card, free bill pay and free transfers between them and your account at other banks.

Keep in mind the USAA accounts are only available to (former) members of the armed forces.

  USAA Ally Bank ING Direct Charles Schwab
Writing_checks Free Free $5 for 50 checks Free
Depositing_checks* Smart-phone and at UPS stores Free postage paid envelopes and by scanner.  Not Available Free postage paid envelopes and by smart-phone.
Interest_Rate**  Up to 0.45% 0.84% 0.80% 0.20%
Free_ATM Any ATM in US Any ATM in US 35,000 ATM’s Any ATM in the world
Customer_Service Regular Business Hours Mon-Sat 24/7 Business hours 7 days a week Business Hours 7 days per week

 

* Depositing checks by smart-phone can come with deposit limits. I.e. Schwab limited it to 1000 dollars for the first three months. This was both per check and per day. It took one phone call to raise it to 2500 dollars. If certain requirements are met, Schwab says they will go up all the way to 25,000 dollars.

** All interest rates are based on the available savings (not checking) accounts. It is safe to assume the rates on all checking accounts are near zero. Besides, if you have a sizable amount of money, it shouldn’t be hanging out in your checking account anyways. If you have 50,000 dollars I would recommend to put 40,000 of that in savings to benefit from the higher interest rates. Transferring it back into checking is free and immediate.

My favorites are Ally Bank and Charles Schwab. We have a personal checking account with Ally and enjoy their easy to use website. We considered opening a second checking account for our rentals with Ally but decided that we prefer not to have all of our eggs in one basket and wanted to be able to deposit checks by iPhone. More on our personal finances in a later post.

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Mike Mclean is a Section 8 landlord (with over 300 units) in Philadelphia and owner of www.section8bible.com 50 Money-saving Tips for Every Landlord (For Sale at Amazon) is aimed at landlords of section 8 rentals and homes with very little luxuries, but has some helpful tips for landlords with all kinds of properties. Mike’s message has [...]

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