There are lots of resources out there telling landlords how to screen tenants. We thought it might be helpful to tenants out there to show you what a property manager does when conducting tenant screening. We interviewed Las Vegas Property Manager George Trombley of Blackbird Realty to give us a behind the scenes look at what he looks for in tenant screening. George has screened over 10,000 tenants in his life...
Here is the video and transcript:
Dave: Hey everybody. My name's Dave Borden with RentScreener. We're about to start a new series called Get Ready To Rent: Behind the Scenes With a Real Property Manager. We have the pleasure of having George Trombley, a property manager here in Las Vegas and we're going to give you a behind the scenes look at what landlords actually look for when they conduct tenant screening and help you get ready for the process. It'll help you save time and money as you look for your next rental. Thanks for joining us, George.
George: You're welcome, Dave. Thanks for having me.
Dave: George is also a website customer of ours, great guy, he's going to shoot you straight. George is a Vietnam Veteran. He's been doing property management for how long? When did you start doing your first property?
George: My first property management job was in 1966, Dave.
Dave: Last I checked, that's about 49 years.
George: Right.
Dave: How many tenants have you screened in your life?
George: I would probably say in excess of 10,000 tenants in a lifetime.
Dave: We have the real deal here, lots of experience. Like I said, he's going to tell it to you straight. You may not like what he was to say but our job here is to get you ready to rent to save time while you're doing that. Most anyone that you're going to rent from whether it's property management company or an apartment complex, or even an individual landlord, is going to do some form of tenant screening on you. George can you tell us the major factors that people look for; whether it's you, or a landlord, or apartment complex. What are you looking for when you screen a tenant?
George: When I screen a tenant, I look one for his rental history, the ability for the tenant to pay the rent, past evictions, unpaid utility bills, things that are going to be creating a problem for us while the tenant is occupying the property.
Dave: Do you check their credit history?
George: I'm going to run their credit report, I'm going to do a criminal background check on them, I'm going to see if there's previous evictions, judgments are a big factor. If there's a judgment against the tenant, that can create all kinds of problems later on if the judgment's not satisfied.
Dave: You guys, at your company, you have a policy that you use, or at least some kind of decision matrix or something that you will use to evaluate a tenant. Correct?
George: Exactly.
Dave: Everyone may be different and the purpose of this series of videos is to get you ready for that process. Know what your credit score is before you ever even look at a property that way you'll know you'll be able to fix some of the issues that might be in there. Know if you have a criminal record. If you've ever been evicted, be ready to have a pretty good reason for that. Know that someone like George is going to check your landlord references and make sure that you were a good tenant and they need to make sure that you have the income necessary to pay for the rent, and they're going to do their best to verify that income, so make sure that if you tell someone how much you're making you're able to verify that. Each one of those areas that we talked about; credit, criminal and eviction history, landlord references, and income, we're going to do a separate video on each one of those and go into detail so that you can help get ready for each one of those sections. Thanks a lot for joining us and stay tuned for the next video.
