Must-Ask Questions during a Landlord Reference Check

During a landlord reference check, we usually ask a lot of questions to make sure that our tenants are screened properly. In this article, we will cover what is a landlord reference and what are the questions that we ask to successfully screen a tenant.

What is a landlord reference?

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Landlord reference is when we call a previous or current landlord. We as a property management company actually call two landlords. Why two? Because the current landlord might just  say anything to get the tenants out if they are a horrible tenant. They might say, “Yes they’re fantastic, yes they pay their rent” and then we might say, “Great!” Once we take them in,  we are assuming the problems that these people want to get rid of. If we ask two landlords, most likely they’re going to tell the truth since we have another reference that we can mention while asking them.

To give you an overview, below are some of the questions that we ask:

• Have the tenants paid their rent on time?
• Have they paid all their rent?
• How have they been as residents? Have there been any neighbor complaints?
• What about the condition of the property? Are they treating it with care?

Now they’ve taken care of the place properly. So what else is going to be important when we’re asking a landlord?

• Would you rent to them again?

We need to hear their pauses. They might say, “Yeah we can rent to them again.” then that hesitation might be like, “Okay, what is it that you wouldn’t rent to them again? What about them would you change?” and they might say, “Well, they park their cars on the grass or they have a really loud dog.” You are allowed to ask these types of questions.

And that brings us to our next and last question:

• Have they fulfilled every lease obligation or broken any of the rules and regulations that you provided to them?

If there’s any hesitation, we dig further into it. If we have the right answers for all of these questions, we then proceed with the application and approve them. But if some issues or problems come up, we thoroughly check their application and take time in the approval process.

As a recap, those are the questions that we ask to previous or current landlords. If you or anyone else you know, is looking for a property manager that can help you screen tenants, please think of Green Ocean Property Management, you get more than a property manager, you get peace of mind.