NEW YEAR RESOLUTION
I will name every adult occupant on the lease and conduct screening on every one of those adults.
If there are minor children, we want to list those minor children but each adult occupant should sign the lease after being properly vetted.
Oftentimes, one of the adults has something to hide and wants the landlord to overlook his or her background and deflect scrutiny onto someone else.
For example, the husband might say, “I don’t want my wife to undergo the credit check, just run mine,” and the answer by the would-be landlord should be no, we vet each adult occupying the rental unit.
If the prospective tenants survive the application process, please do not hand them the keys before payment clears. If the lease is signed, the incoming tenants occupy the unit and the payment does not clear, it could be a lengthy process to get them out.
Worse yet, the new tenants living for free in their new surroundings can become a nuisance for neighboring residents, perhaps making bothered tenants leave and sticking the landlord for even more lost rental income.
We need to know who is occupying the premises and get a sense of who they are, their background, and their credit history. Sometimes this becomes a game of musical chairs with occupants being swapped out and this is what we want to avoid. Who is living in the rental unit, and what is their worthiness as a tenant?