how to pick tenant (by miat42)

You can *seldom* find tenants with good credit score. If they have goodcredit score, you would be like you and go out and buy a REO propertythat's below assessment. The reason that they still rent is that theycan't be approved for a loan. However, the devil is in the details.Despite that they don't have high credit scores, many of them show verygood payment history. For example, some may have experiencedforeclosure because they haven't been able to handle a suddenlyincreased Option ARM loan. But they have been responsible in most otherpayments, such as car loans, credit card bills, utility bills and mostsmaller bills. Credit report will show you all that. These tenants aregood ones. When checking credit reports, I place very low emphasis onthe score itself, I place high emhasis on payment behavior. I want tomake sure that they don't own bad debt that is being collected byagencies. I also check eviction report to make sure they have neverbeen evicted. Some of them may have filed personal bankruptcy 5 yearsago. But if their credit report shows that they have maintained goodpayment history for last 2-3 years, they are good tenants for you.

Even after such scrutiny, you may not be able to guarantee 100%riskfree. That's fine. If they don't pay you, charge late fee for 5% onthe 5th. On the 10th, go to court to file non-payment suit againstthem. There shall not be any emotion involved in this, and *noleniency* is allowed. If you follow this, you should be able to getthem out or force them to pay. There will be no 100% risk free rentalbusiness. Landlord simply needs to reduce risk. If the risk is reducedto 10-20%, pretty good.

萬一破罐子破摔咋辦啊? nothing to be afraid about, follow normal eviction process.Use deposit to pay for most damages. Remember, always charge highersecurity deposit, for example, 1.5 the month's rent works well. Ahigher security deposit may serve to deter bad behavior from tenants.If a tenants can still want to rent from you with a high deposit,chances are, he is a serious and trouble-free tenant!