Hopefully you have read the previous two posts on the March 2015 theme of checking and referencing and will appreciate that this is a vital element of managing your rented property.
In fact it is probably THE most important thing – your tenants are both responsible for maintaining your investment (subject to your repairing obligations) and providing your income!
I would recommend that you have a set procedure that you follow for ALL your tenants and that you do not allow anyone to persuade you to deviate from this.
Remember, con men can be very persuasive – thats their job!
Here are some suggested things to do:
The Application Form
First off you need to have a detailed application form for prospective tenants to complete.
This should have details of their names, employers, previous addresses, next of kin, mobile phone numbers, names and addresses of references, whether they have a car (and its number), bank account details, any pets, etc, etc.
You will find a form you can use for free on LandlordZONE and we also have one on Landlord Law.
However this form should just be the start – you should adapt it to your needs based on your experience of renting to tenants and the type of tenant you are looking for.
When the tenant completes and signs this form it has several purposes:
- It gives you information you can use to base your decision on – however also
- It can contain a data protection statement and
- Give you permission to use the information to take credit checks
- It can also be used as evidence in court cases (particularly if you put the special statement of truth wording at the end)
Other things to do:
Employers references – you need to take these and follow them up – this is critical as it is your tenants salary which will be paying your rent.
Double check the details – i.e. the address, telephone and similar information you have been given, to make sure they are real (and not the address of the applicants’ friends) – you can do this via the internet or yellow pages. A counsel of perfection is to assume that everything is false until you have confirmed it independently elsewhere.
Do some internet checking – for example if you are renting to a family you will not want one with out of control teenagers who are going to wreck your house. So, for example, do some checking against their names on Facebook and see what you find.
Personal references and previous landlords references are important, but remember that personal referees could be ‘primed’ to give a good report, and if they are nightmare tenants the previous landlord will be keen to get rid of them.
Credit checks – you should also pay for a professional credit check to be done – for example you need to make sure that the applicant is not being followed around by a trail of County Court Judgments.
ID checks – you should also take some ID (passports, driving license, utility bills etc) to check that the prospective tenants are who they say they are. Make sure you keep copies of these.
If you are in the West Midlands you will also need to do a Right to Rent check.
Things to watch out for
You need to make sure that the tenant will be able to afford the rent so check this aspect very carefully.
However you also need to be wary if the tenants appear to be too free with their cash. Particularly if they offer to pay cash up front for, say, six months and seem keen for you to leave them alone.
Sometimes apparently respectable tenants can actually be in league with criminals who want your property to use as a cannabis farm. This is not as unusual as you may think and it CAN happen to you.
Read Ben’s post here.
You may also want to have a read of the (free) Scams and Frauds section on Landlord Law.
And finally
What is your feeling about this prospective tenant? Do you feel positive about them or is there a smidgen of doubt?
If you are not sure – I would suggest that you follow your instinct and find someone else. Often your subconscious will pick up signals that the ‘top of your mind’ will not see. Learn to trust it.
But carry out the formal checks too. If you do both – you should normally be fine.
What are YOUR tips for landlords on checking tenants?
How dare they have teenagers huh?
What do you do with someone that has come to the UK to work for 6 months? Their employer is a Indian IT consulting company, so an employer reference is not worth much.
I don’t think the circumstances you describe would be worth the extra hassle Ian.
If it was a reputable foreign company, consulting to a reputable UK company, paying top rent, and it would become a regular thing, then I might consider it.
It is possible to carry out the checks in the article above (and more), in a tenant’s home country. Clearly it depends which country they are coming from how much good that will be.
Currently, a landlord is allowed to charge fees for doing this considerable amount of extra work.
It is also possible to take out RGI. There are specialist companies that do this but Homelet will also insure, subject to meeting all other criteria.
I’ve done similar lets in the past without problem.
If you are particularly tenacious, it is even possible to chase a bad tenant’s debts in many foreign countries using the reciprocal agreement (all EEA countries are included)-Good luck with that one!
I would always go back to their penultimate landlord (depending on how long ago it was) and ask them for a reference. This has helped us avoid potential problem tenants on several occasions.
http://www.landlordreferencing.co.uk/ can help with finding out details of past landlords with its tenant history report.
I have also used the land register to find the address of the owner of every property that is listed on persons credit report, when they claim they have lost the details of there penultimate landlord. (Also useful to check that details of past landlords are not being made up.)
Excellent suggestions Tessa.
When checking Employer and past Landlord references you can never be careful enough, we come across many cases where tenants abscond owing rent and it then transpires when trying to trace them that they forged their reference details.
With Employer references one key warning signal is when a mobile number is provided for the Employer reference, when this is the case additional steps need to be taken to ensure that the person providing the reference is genuine.
This can take many forms, perhaps googling the Employer and phoning their landline to enquire with Reception they do have employees by the name of the tenant and referee.
Even if this is the case it may be prudent when taking the reference over the mobile number to explain that as a security requirement you need to phone them back through the landline for the Employer to confirm their identity, when doing this do not let them provide you with a Direct Dial number you need to ring the actual Googled switchboard number for the Employer and get put through to them.
Of course rogue tenants can still get round this using virtual answering services but luckily so far we have only come across this very rarely.