Learn Why Meeting Potential Tenants at a Rental and Showing is a Waste of Time and Money in Tampa Property Management
Setting up meetings with potential renters can be an aggravating experience. They are often late; sometimes they don’t bother to come at all. How many beautiful weekends have you wasted waiting for Prospective Tenants, who never bothered to show up?
You can reclaim the wasted time; you can alleviate the frustration of no-shows. You can free up your evenings and weekends so you can spend more time with your family (or fishing). How? Each of the rental properties we manage is equipped with a lockbox on the front door, the keys tucked safely inside. Potential Tenants armed with a four-digit code can visit units at a time that is convenient for them, saving you the trouble of hovering around an empty unit waiting for someone who might never arrive. Not to mentioned that 3-4 times as many people will tour your property because they can look when it is convienent for them and not you. This is a huge marketing advantage.
Doesn’t a lockbox open us up to potential theft and vandalism?
Callers are carefully screened. Each potential tenant is asked questions regarding their rental and personal history: do they have a verifiable income, do they have a criminal pasts, do they owe any money to their past landlords?
Listening for the truth.
Separating the wheat from the chaff, or the model tenants from the deadbeats, is just about listening.
When a Potential Tenant says, “I receive unemployment”.
We hear, “My income is going to dry-up soon”.
When they say, “ I have a poor credit history because of my ex-spouse”
We hear, “I have a poor credit history and no sense of responsibility”
When they say, “ I do have criminal charges on my record, but it’s not my fault, or I wasn’t convicted”.
We hear, “ I have a criminal past and I have no sense of guilt/responsibility”
“I was living with friends/ relatives, but I wasn’t on the lease”.
“No credit History”
This may seem harsh, but when we cut to the truth of what people are saying, we can eliminate a huge amount of potential time-wasters. When I hear any one of these stories, I know that I don’t have to go any further. This simple 10-minute phone interview saves hours.
There will be those people who will fall somewhere in the middle. You can’t quite access their trustworthiness from their answers. Those are the clients we invite to fill in an application at our office. If they actually show up, we take down their information and a copy of their driver’s license. Luckily, dishonest people don’t like to disclose their personal information; they frequently make appointments they don’t keep. Broken appointments are always frustrating, but far more convenient at your office (or a local Starbucks close to your home) than at a rental property that might be miles away.
