Need help finding the right tenants but don't know what to look for

Your apartment sounds great, so I am thinking that it is your approach to marketing, and to how you view tenants, that needs tweaking.

I owned a coop for a long time, but given that I moved to NYC after college with a lot of educational debt, and later went back to school for much more debt (always kept my payments up to date), I spent many more years as renter than as an owner. And I have always been a great tenant, both when I had little money, and when I had more. So that’s where this advice is coming from.

If you want tenants who are responsible tenants, you must approach this as a responsible landlord. If you want someone with certain values about paying on time, etc., you have to embody those values yourself – including in how your relate to your tenants. That is how you attract great tenants.

Like you said above, you are willing to conisder not giving a lease. Dumb, dumb, dumb – and not just for the reason stated above about making it easier to get rid of tenants (if you learn to attract great tenants, you will never find yourself in that situation.) If you are unwilling to give a lease, you have just emilimated almost all of the fiscally responsible tenants from considering your apartment. I would never, ever consider an apartment without a lease of at least a year. I try for two years, or, failing that, to include an option on a second year. Why? Because moving is expensive, and as a person who watches my spending (so that I am, and have always been, able to pay my bills on time and maintain good credit), I do not want to undertake to move unless I decide it is time to move. I would never live in such an open-ended situation, where I could be forced to move with little notice. (Also, I work hard, that’s how one maintains good work history, and an unanticipated move, having to scramble to find an apartment and move on short notice would mean I would likely have to take at least some hours away from work, and it might not be the best time to do that at work.) People who are responsible about both their work and their spending will not put themselves in this situation willingly. And since many people are willing to give a lease for a year, you are now, by definition, looking among the pool of tenants that is not the most responsible about planning ahead for contingencies such as moves. Am I making myself clear here?

Ditto on asking for two months security (or first, security, and last, as that’s the same thing.) I’ve rented many apartments, and I’ve never, ever considered giving more than one month security. Again, if there are many apartments in the market asking for one month’s security, why would I, a fiscally prudent person, agree to give two? There are many landlords who don’t return security deposits, and many who deduct for things that are, by law, the landlord’s responsibility (exterior window washing in a high rise anyone? One landlord tried that on someone I know). Why would I, again, as a very fiscally prudent person, put two months security at risk when I could put only one? Again, when you ask for two months security, you eliminate the majority of your most fiscally prudent and responsible renters from considering your apartment.

In fact, I have also never waited for the security to be returned to me, but have just written a note with my last month’s rent, explaining the end of my tenancy (after I had let them know, usually verbally if my landlord was a person and not a management company, that I was leaving before the end of the lease, and why – like buying an apartment, moving away to go to school, etc.) I would then write with my rent check something like – here’s the check for $100, which, in addition to the security deposit of XX, equals my last month’s rent, as my last day here will be x. (I’ve let them know I was leaving earlier, so they can make plans to rerent, and would have been willing to find the next tenant if they wanted me to, but they generally have preferred to do that themselves (as I would as a landlord), except in one instance when I was in college (when I was moving, reluctantly, because the landlord wouldn’t evict the family of drug dealers who had moved in above us and literally let us get no sleep, because he had imprudently raised the rent too high on the single mother and her daughter who had previously lived there – so that’s another lesson to you, don’t force out your good tenants for a few more bucks, it can have ramifications you haven’t considered), so I found the next tenant for him. I can’t imagine they stayed very long, either, unless they didn’t need sleep.

I have never asked if it was OK with my landlord to cover my last month’s rent by deducting the security deposit from my last month’s rent (in my example, the rent had gone up $100 since my first year’s lease, but I hadn’t been asked to up the security deposit – some ask you to top it up to the new one month’s rent, some don’t, I’m indifferent to whichever they want, though it does seem a bit nicer if they don’t bother to ask for the additional security with each small rent increase). In each instance, this was fine with my landlord. Because by then they knew I was a responsible tenant, who paid my rent on time each month, and who took care of the place, sometimes painting and making small improvements. I figured they could come back at me and let me know they expected me to pay the whole last month’s rent, and then get my

Vinca – one of our former landlords, when we were renters, was an attorney and he once told me that every single person gets a good reference because if they are good tenants, it is the truth and if they are horrible tenants, they will become someone else’s problem and that has ALWAYS stayed with me.

How do you verify previous addresses aside from what is listed on the credit report?

Great point to ask about musical instruments because we like a quiet house. We are not unreasonable re: noise level but weekly raging parties at 2:00 am ain’t going to cut it.

OK, am purging the month-month idea out fo my head.

vinca,

thanks for the good informative post as usual per the above.

@coopfornow–«why would it make a difference what is rented out» gale said it as well as I could. If it’s units in an owner occupied building, you are going to have to live with these people(and they with you). Also there is a different mindset and values, I believe, for investors than for owner-occupiers, who usually aren’t really landlords in the common sense of the term.

Whether you have a lease or not, you need to follow a very specific process in NYC to evict a tenant who will not vacate willingly. In my opinion, it’s delusional to believe that having NO lease will make that process easier or cheaper. I can’t imagine a good and creditworthy tenant taking all the time and trouble to move into an apartment without assurance of a specific length of rental. Common forms of Blumberg leases can be found at local stationery stores, and both REBNY and Blumberg forms can be found online:
REBNY: http://bit.ly/ftRmSK
Blumberg: http://bit.ly/dNbViC
This is a dated article you can read to consider the pros and cons of having a lease: http://nyti.ms/ew5rZM

We’re rather old-school when it comes to credit reports, which were not used or expected “back in the day.” Yes, these days we look at the credit report, but we do not rely on them for final determination. If you’re worried about a tenant’s creditworthiness, renting through a broker will automatically eliminate many applicants. We require first, last and one month’s security from all our tenants.

You mention paperwork, but you do not mention checking their previous addresses, or speaking to their previous landlords. Neither of those provide a guarantee, as there are many praying-to-be-ex-landlords who will gladly misrepresent a tenant just to get rid of them. In NYC, there are certain questions or exclusions that are prohibited under fair housing law. You can read more about that here: http://bit.ly/fzdGZ7

Honestly, my gut feeling from this post and your previous posts is that you’d do better working with a broker. Nevertheless, here are some questions we often cover in our very informal interview, though rarely do we ask them as a series of questions:
— Place of current employment
— Length of employment
— Hours of work
— Tenant’s primary sources of income?
— Total amount of household income?
— Time of day tenant generally awakes and goes to sleep
— Social Security number
— Name of bank
— Number of vehicles
— Whether tenant has ever had their own apartment before
— Name, address and phone number of current and prior landlords
— Tenant’s own current address
— Why tenant left (or is leaving) their previous residence?
— Who else will be living full-time in the apartment? Part-time?
— Did tenant get along well with the landlord and other tenants in their building?
— What tenant likes about this apartment? What they don’t like?
— How applicant found out about this rental?
— Has tenant ever been a fire victim? If yes, please explain.
— Has tenant ever been evicted? If yes, please explain.
— Has tenant ever been convicted of any crime? If yes, please explain.
— What would tenant do if a neighbor was using or selling drugs, or tenant witnessed any other crime?
— What would tenant do if a neighbor was creating a disturbance in the building?
— What is tenant’s relationship to the people they’ve listed as references?
— Has tenant ever been involved in a community group or done volunteer work? Any special hobbies or interests?
— Also, questions about use of apartment by friends and out-of-town family, pets, music (including any instruments owned), parties, smoking, bedbugs, etc.