A change to our tenant vetting procedure that you can implement too

If you are a couple of degrees out at your starting point it could mean that you are a massively off track when you...

If you are a couple of degrees out at your starting point it could mean that you are a massively off track when you get to the finish line. Only a couple of degrees can mean the difference between being a successful landlord with high yielding properties and a landlord who just seems to get by each month.

With this in mind, I wanted to share with you a new idea we are implementing in our tenant vetting procedure which came through a tenant lying on their application this week. This change in our vetting procedure will defiantly allow us to weed out more bad tenants and have an even higher conversion of obtaining the best tenants in the market place.

A change to our tenant vetting procedure that you can implement too:

A new tenant, let’s call her Mrs Bull (because that’s what her vetting application materialised to be) applied for one of our properties. As normal we did the relevant checks-credit check, previous landlord reference checks etc. Mrs Bull got her friend to pretend that she was her previous landlord, gave a fake address so we could send out the landlord reference to her and we even spoke to this lady on the phone, while all the time pretending that she was the previous landlord.

This tenant passed all of our vetting and moved into the property. Yesterday we received a phone call from the REAL landlord explaining that we have just taken on a tenant from hell!

So:

1) We are now in the process of removing this tenant.

2) How do we stop this happening in the future?

Download the land registration details from the internet for the previous landlord

We now download the land registration details to prove the name of the landlord and the address details given by the tenant are correct on any property which has reduced criteria. While this is not 100% fool proof it does give us another line of defence when a tenant wants to commit fraud.

If you find tenants yourself please make sure you download the land registration details of the previous landlord when referencing your new tenant.

OTHER TOP VETTING TIPS……

Facebook

We check the Facebook accounts (if applicable) of every new tenant. Often you can tell a lot about the character of someone purely by looking at their photos and what they share on social media.

Home visits

We visit every new benefit tenant in their current property (as long as they live in the North East). This allows us to see how they have treated this property and is a clear indication of how they are going to treat your property when they move in.