Property Management Tip: How To Screen Tenants

In this video Roy True, business manager of GoldenWest Management, discusses what our tenant screening practices are and how we ensure the most qualified tenants possible are chosen for our client’s properties.

Tenant screening is vital to successfully owning rental properties. It’s what’s going to guarantee that the property is filled with qualified tenants. This ensures the owner is going to enjoy steady and consistent monthly cash flow from their rental properties.

At GoldenWest Management, our tenant screening process starts with reviewing a prospective tenants' credit and FICO scores to determine the average. During this review, we’re going to be specifically looking for evictions or property judgments. As the score gets lower, a landlord also needs to keep an eye out for potential tenant troubles which could make it difficult for their tenant to continue paying rent on time.

After reviewing a prospective tenants' credit history, we’re going to do a full national criminal background check. Doing this ‘deep dive’ will enable us to know specifically if there are potentially any issues that could affect their residency in the property.

Last of all, but very importantly, we’re going to look at rental income verification.

In San Diego, Las Vegas, and Phoenix it’s common for landlords to require tenants to make 2 ½ to 3 times the amount of rent. Sticking with this criteria enables us to have confidence that a tenant can afford the conservative rental rate, keeping a steady flow of income going to our owner clients on a monthly basis.

While these three screening steps are not all that we do, it is the ‘bread and butter’ of our screening process and it helps us to choose the best tenants for our owner clients every time.

At GoldenWest Management we go above and beyond the screening process to offer our owner clients the best property management service that will earn them long term ROI from their rental properties.