Ask any property manager or rental property investment this question, and they’re sure to give you an earful. Tenant screening isn’t just important, it’s crucial. Your tenants will make or break your success as a real estate investor. They can cause headaches, run your property into the ground, and take time, energy and legal costs to evict.

Diligent screening is the best — the only — way to foil nightmare tenants. It’s not a foolproof guarantee you’ll never have any problems, but it prevents most tenant-related problems from happening to begin with.

With tenant screening being such an important business, it makes you wonder why people don’t do it. Surely, if it were so valuable, landlords would all screen and put these nightmare tenants out of business? Unfortunately, a highly effective screening process is like a thorough diet and exercise regimen. Everyone understands their benefits, but few people take the time and effort required to put it into place and do it every day.

How to Manage Tenant Screening

That’s why at Real Property Management, we suggest that property owners give us the task of screening possible candidates. Not only is your time more profitably spent at a task you are already well adept at, property management firms have a few benefits when it comes to screening tenants.

Our system is well-organized and happens daily. Not only has everyone in our office managed the process of client screening hundreds of times, most of us have done it as recently as this week. When something is habitual, it stops even seeming like a chore. It’s just our job!
We have an exceptionally wide pool to draw candidates from. We have bulk advertising deals with many local advertisers, so for the same amount of money it takes for you to place a single classified ad, we can do several. And we get better placement, too.
Property managers scare problem tenants away. The reason problem tenants manage to get into rentals is because they fool inexperienced landlords with some plausible line. Property managers have a reputation for diligently seeking out supporting evidence — so a lot of undesirables don’t even bother.

If we can apply the 80-20 rule to this situation, it’s that 20% of your tenants will cause 80% of your problems. But proper screening will ensure that the problems they cause are of the “my sink is dripping! Please come fix it!” variety (and by the way, we can handle that too).

Why Tenant Screening Is So Important