Finding a Genuine Tenant
By Alan Beesley MNAEA MARLA, Director of The Letting Line
Having been a letting agent in Enfield for over 25 years, it never ceases to amaze me the lengths some people will go to acquire a property. It has been such an eye-opening experience to witness potential tenants posing as people whose identity they’ve stolen, getting friends to pretend to be their employer, blatantly lying about their negative credit history or even provide fake bank statements and payslips!
Identifying genuine tenants
We go to great lengths to identify genuine tenants. On application, we carry out an initial ‘fact find’ to establish the tenant’s property requirements and to find out if such a property falls within the tenant’s budget. We need to find out the tenant’s occupation, number of people who’ll be living at the property and what the total household income is. It is unfortunate that the majority of applicants will fall at this first hurdle because they won’t pass the affordability test and/or credit checks. While we endeavour to be as delicate and tactful about this as possible, it is inevitable that some tenants can be upset, which is something we want to avoid at all costs. But the last thing we want to do is for a tenant to commit to legally binding tenancy agreement, only to find that it isn’t affordable for them, which will ultimately result in legal action.
At this stage, we have very much taken the tenant’s word that the information they have provided verbally is correct, which means we will set about helping them to find a property. Once we have found them a suitable property, we will go through their circumstances once again before we take a Holding Deposit from them to secure the property. At this stage, we take their verification on to the next level…
Specialist referencing
We use our specialist referencing partners, Tenancy 360, to carry out their In-Depth Tenancy Referencing checks. They understand just how crucial it is to find reliable tenants for our clients, so you can be confident that we’re finding the right tenants for your property in these challenging times. Their process gathers a wealth of information on a tenant’s affordability through employer referencing, payslip/ bank statement assessment, and the use of Open Banking technology. Furthermore, strong credit checking, ID verification for Right to Rent, and previous landlord referencing also provide added assurance that we’re making an informed decision about your potential tenants, every time.
This may seem to many people to be overkill, but being proactive means we are looking after the interests of our landlords and tenants alike. We find that by being meticulously thorough avoids many of the problems and tricky situations that come about by putting tenants in your property that can’t afford to pay the rent.
Thinking of renting your property?
For help or advice on renting your home please get in touch, click here to contact us.