Every landlord's guide to finding great tenants

Book - 2006

Let this book guide you through the process of attracting, screening and choosing the best renters possible.

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346.0434/Nolo 2020
2020: 1 / 1 copies available
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Subjects
Genres
Handbooks and manuals
Published
Berkeley, Calif. : Nolo 2006-
Language
English
Item Description
Includes index.
Physical Description
volumes ; 23 cm
ISBN
9781413327526
  • 1. Choosing Good Tenants Makes Good Business Sense
  • Ten ways to keep your rental business profitable
  • How to use the Landlord's Forms Library
  • Why good record keeping is so important-and how to do it
  • 2. Complying With Discrimination Laws
  • Legal discrimination: Valid reasons for rejecting applicants
  • Rental properties exempt from antidiscrimination laws
  • Types of illegal discrimination
  • Occupancy standards: How many tenants are too many?
  • Managers and discrimination
  • 3. How to Deal With Current Tenants-Before You Look for New Ones
  • Send departing tenants a move-out letter
  • Do a pre-move-out inspection of the rental
  • Inform tenants of your plans to advertise and show the rental
  • Ask departing tenants to complete an exit questionnaire
  • How to work with tenants who are not leaving voluntarily
  • What happens when you can't deliver the rental on time?
  • 4. How to Advertise Effectively
  • Prepare a rental property fact sheet
  • Identify your market
  • Create a marketing worksheet
  • Use word-of-mouth
  • Set up a tenant referral program
  • Post "For Rent" signs
  • Drafting written ads
  • Advertise online
  • List with local employers
  • Use a real estate office to advertise for and screen tenants
  • 5. How Should You Show Your Rental?
  • Individual property tours
  • Private open houses
  • Public open houses
  • 6. Preparing Your Rental Application and Screening Materials
  • Your rental policies
  • Your rental application
  • Consent to contact references and perform credit check
  • Credit check payment
  • Receipt for credit check fee
  • Consent to criminal and background check
  • Legal status in the United States
  • Lease or rental agreement
  • 7. Fielding Initial Questions and Phone Screening
  • Make it easy to reach you
  • Have your Rental Property Fact Sheet ready
  • Prepare a Rental Property Comparison Chart
  • Prepare a Tenant Information Sheet
  • How to prescreen over the phone or in person
  • Carefully document your conclusions
  • Dealing with on-the-fence prospects
  • Schedule a site visit
  • Should you negotiate on the first call or conversation?
  • 8. Prepare Your Rental for an Open House or Showing
  • Prepare the rental unit for an attractive showing
  • Prepare the rental unit for a safe showing
  • Prepare the rental unit for a secure showing
  • How to plan for and do repairs and refurbishing
  • 9. Face to Face: Showing the Rental and Negotiating With Prospective Tenants
  • How to hold an open house
  • How to conduct an individual showing
  • Talk with your visitors and answer questions
  • Field questions thoughtfully
  • Sell your property, but don't puff
  • How to negotiate with prospective tenants
  • Discussions with applicants with a disability
  • What's the next step for your visitors?
  • Conduct a wrap-up
  • 10. Evaluating Rental Applications
  • Log in every application
  • Confirm receipt of credit check fee and consent form
  • How to review Rental Applications
  • 11. Checking Applicants' Credit Reports
  • How to get a credit report
  • What's in a credit report?
  • The limits of credit reports
  • How to evaluate an applicant's credit report
  • Rerank your applications
  • Handle credit reports, criminal background reports, and tenant-screening reports carefully
  • 12. Checking Landlord, Employer, and Personal References
  • Contact past and current landlords
  • Contact current employer
  • Contact personal references
  • Reranking and rejecting applicants after talking with references
  • 13. Checking Applicants' Criminal Backgrounds
  • Your qualified legal right to reject tenants with criminal backgrounds
  • How to avoid renting to people with dangerous criminal backgrounds
  • The basics of criminal background checks
  • The risks of running a criminal background check
  • The risks of not running a criminal background check
  • How to decide whether to do a criminal background check
  • Inform prospective tenants of your policy and get consent
  • How to do a Megan's Law search on your own
  • How to get a criminal background report
  • How to reject following a Megan's Law or criminal background check
  • 14. How to Choose and Work With a Tenant-Screening Agency
  • How useful are tenant-screening services?
  • Obtain written consent from applicants
  • How to find a tenant-screening service (and how much they cost)
  • How to evaluate services provided by tenant-screening firms
  • How to use the screening report
  • Accepting and rejecting applicants based on screening reports
  • 15. Choosing Your New Tenant
  • What to do when you have no qualified applicants
  • How to choose among qualified applicants
  • How to communicate an acceptance
  • Conditional acceptances and adverse action letters
  • How to deal with cosigners
  • Holding deposits
  • Signing the lease or rental agreement
  • 16. How to Reject-What to Say, What to Write
  • Ten tips on how to reject
  • Adverse action letters
  • Rejections: How to say them, how to write them
  • Communicate post-application rejections by mail or email
  • Appendix
  • Using the Forms
  • Editing RTFs
  • List of Forms
  • Index
Review by Library Journal Review

Nolo's successful formula for creating law books for lay audiences combines user-friendly formatting and attorney authors with intuitive organizational schemes. Nolo books include information on variances in the laws from state to state, and readers can go to the publisher's web site to learn about changes in the law. Typically, there are abundant lists of additional resources and appendixes or accompanying CD-ROMs with self-help forms or checklists. These three new titles exemplify these traits. With Divorce, attorney and mediator Doskow covers the before, during, and after of divorce, counseling readers on the types of divorces, how to make decisions about living arrangements and the division of property, and how custody decisions are made. She advocates minimizing conflict but includes sections on domestic violence and kidnapping if the worst happens. Appendixes contain state-to-state grounds for divorce and financial inventory forms. Federal Employment Laws, published in cooperation with the Society for Human Resource Management, is designed as a tool for human resources officers. Organized in chapters by the 20 most important federal employment laws, it covers such issues as discrimination, disabilities, workplace safety, and equal pay. Employment law specialists Guerin and DelPo provide an overview of the intent and application of each statute and explain how it is enforced. Compliance sections in each chapter help employers understand what they must report, the records they must keep, and what penalties might befall them if they fail to comply. There are extensive lists of contacts for applicable government agencies. In Finding Great Tenants, landlord/tenant lawyer Portman pairs business and legal advice for those who own or manage rental property. She helps readers with everything from conducting an open house to screening tenants without engaging in discrimination. Portman covers the legalities involved in obtaining credit, criminal background, and Megan's Law reports. Her advice on negotiating with tenants and evaluating applications and credit reports will be particularly useful to new landlords. An accompanying CD-ROM includes 40 common forms of agreement or correspondence. All three titles are available as e-books and are recommended for public libraries.-Joan Pedzich, Harris Beach, PLLC, Rochester, NY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.