By Carole Hawkins, [email protected]
Do you rent a home to a tenant who’s gone through a bankruptcy?
Property managers Bailey Jordan and Melissa McCall Owen compared notes on what their companies do.
McCall Owen, of Deltona Realty in St. Augustine, will rent to people who’ve gone through bankruptcies, as long as the tenant earns at least three times the rent. She verifies income with the applicant’s employer.
“In 33 years, we’ve never had an eviction,” she said.
More than 70 property managers swapped ideas at a February meeting of the Northeast Florida chapter of the National Association of the Residential Property Managers.
Real estate sales are in recovery, while the rental marketing is strong as ever. It makes property management look like a smart career niche.
But, what do for-sale Realtors know about tenant screening, property inspections, issues with leases and security deposits?
“There’s not a lot of education for property managers out there,” said Tia Vincent, past president for the chapter. “The one association in Northeast Florida that trains Realtors has only one property management class.”
NARPM’s round table discussion was a way to learn more.
Property managers and affiliates, as many as eight per table, simultaneously debated issues, then shared ideas with the group at large.
Tenant screening
It’s how companies avoid evictions. It doesn’t pay to be too restrictive, though. For example, Deltona Realty doesn’t ban pets.
“You’d lose 50 percent of your applicants if you did that,” McCall Owen said.
One member uses SmartMove.com for background checks on renters. The online service, performed by TransUnion, is a way to check tenants without property managers having to request their personal information. The service provides a criminal history, credit report, eviction report and leasing recommendation.
Property inspections
Some companies perform inspections themselves, using apps like Property Pal or Happy Inspector to organize work and store photos in the cloud.
But others said a third-party inspection is more likely to hold up in court when there’s a dispute. Onsite Pros is one third-party vendor they use. The company provides photographs and detailed condition reports on homes.
Leases
If the lease term is longer than a year, it needs to be witnessed, attorney Jeffery Wilkins said.
“I always have two witnesses and I have documents notarized,” he said.
Security deposits
Some companies charge a security deposit for pets.
But a smarter approach, others said, is to charge a pet fee and keep the money for cleaning.