by Brian Cody

Created on: January 05, 2011   Last Updated: January 06, 2011

 My wife and I have been landlords for the past 15 years since the 1990s.  We have owned a 4 family, a 5 family multi-family unit, as well as a rental condo unit in Florida.  The following phenomenal  and valuable tips will save you headaches, money, and wasted time with vacant units.

Proper tenant screening strategies are critical to your ability to show a positive property cash flow.  We utilize a creative and excellent tenant screening strategy.  This strategy is compliant with state and federal fair housing guidelines.

The result of this strategy means that you will enjoy a low vacancy rate while spending less time in the eviction housing court system.  When we do receive a phone call from a prospective tenant requesting to show the vacant apartment, we ask the tenant the following questions;   Why are you moving?  How many people will be living with you?  Do you have pets?  Are you smokers?

 Prior to providing the prospective tenant our property address to set up a showing of the vacant unit, we will inform the tenant of the following statement;  We do strive to provide for our tenants a clean, quiet, safe. family friendly property. Does that sound good to you?  With that in mind we do require from all potential applicants that they  go  thu a thorough credit history review, criminal background check.  We will also require a complete reference check of current and prior employers and landlords.  Is there anything that we need to be aware of.

 At this point we do get a lot of prospective tenants that will hang up on us.  But in the long run that will save us the headache of potential evections and apartment vacancies'.  It is better to have a vacant unit now than to face an non paying tenant who will be evicted later.

 One vital piece of advice is to never ever rent to family, friends or relatives.  That will be a disaster waiting to happen.

 When it comes to showing an vacant apartment we have learned a thing or two.  We have figured out that if you have 10 prospective tenants who request a showing, you will be lucky to have 4 show up at all. How do you save your effort and wasted time?  Schedule multiple showings at the same time period.  If you have an afternoon showing around 1pm schedule as many appointments as possible during that window of time.  You can also provide a rental open house on the weekends from

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