Leasing & Onboarding New Renters
Everything you need to know about signing new lease agreements and onboarding new tenants.
Preparing to sign a lease agreement?
Don’t sign it lightly.
Have you collected rental applications from a large pool of candidates? Have you run credit, criminal and eviction reports on all applicants? Collected application fees or charged the screening reports to the renter, to verify they’re committed?
If you’ve done all that, and made all the phone calls to verify income, employment, housing history, etc., and you feel 100% rock solid about this tenant… now you need to make sure you have a defensive lease agreement.
Think of your lease agreement as your shield, your armor. Most state landlord-tenant laws are extremely tenant-friendly, and designed to protect the renter, not the landlord. That means you’re responsible for protecting yourself.
How do you do that? With a comprehensive, protective lease package. Read on for more details, and happy leasing!
“Required Reading” – Start Here First!
Want more? We have you covered! Here’s some further reading on lease agreements, security deposits, move-in and everything else you need to know about onboarding new renters.
Full Library of Leasing & New Tenancy Articles:
11 Tactics for Better Tenant Retention, Fewer Turnovers & Max ROI
Turnovers are ROI killers. There’s the lost income, during the vacancy. You also have to pay the mortgage, and pay to keep the utilities on. Most residential units need to be repainted. Tack on another several thousand dollars. Do you need new carpets? Often...
Legal Lowdown: What Makes a Lease Agreement State-Specific?
“I’ll just use this free template I stumbled across online as my lease agreement.” – Attributed to the Common Newbie Landlord, scientific name Stultus novitius. If the idea above has ever occurred to you, you’re probably lucky enough to have never been to rent...
Security Deposits: 5 Common (and Costly!) Landlord Mistakes
How much security do security deposits actually provide? Security deposits are only as effective as the policies landlords have for them. But most mom-and-pop landlords end up learning the hard way that security deposit mistakes are among the costliest they can make....
Fortified: 10 Tips to Tenant-Proof Your Rental
People are clumsy, dirty, accident-prone Tasmanian devils. That goes double for children. Homeowners are no better, but they have so much money invested in their property that they take more care not to damage it. But renters? Forget about it. Tornado inbound,...
7 Hacks to Cheaply Redo Your Property’s Kitchen & Bathrooms
(Photo courtesy of Creairtive.com) Real estate experts love to tell property owners how important it is to redo their kitchens and bathrooms. Easy for them to say – they don’t have to foot the bill for the expensive renovations! But they’re not wrong, either....
Unstable Ground! 5 Real Estate Disruptions on the Horizon
What are the odds that artificial intelligence will render real estate agents obsolete in the near future? If you answered “nearly 100%” then you answered right. At least according to a recent Oxford study on artificial intelligence. Scary stuff? Maybe. But is...
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