Tenant Referencing is Important if you are a Landlord

I think I have told you all before how my hubby and I purchased two properties (one 2 years ago and one 4 years ago) and we use both as investment properties.

The one property is a home and we rent that out on a year to year basis (yearly lease with the tenants), the other property is our vacation condo at the Jersey shore and we rent that out on a weekly basis on the weeks we are not there. We are considering purchasing another property maybe next year.

Anyway, it is important that if you are a property owner who rents out your properties that you use some type of tenant screening service to check out all of your tenants before you agree to rent to them. Trust me, we learned this the hard way once with tenants who made our lives miserable for a year.

It is equally important to do tenant credit checks because tenants do lie on their rental applications. Trust me, once they are moved in, it is hard to get bad tenants out! Non-Paying tenants can tie you up in the court system for months without handing you a dime so protect yourself before you even rent to them.

The final thing you want to do before signing a lease agreement with a tenant is to get some tenant references from them. We require a minimum of three references from all of our tenants before we will sign a leasing contract with them.

We love investing in properties and look at it as a way to secure our future once we reach our golden ages but with that said, being landlords is a lot of hard work and at times very stressful. Know your rights before you get into this type of business and always be selective on who you rent your properties out to!

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