Our topic today is how to protect your rental home from tenant damage. Before we talk about tips and tricks, we want to give you one piece of advice that will really mitigate tenant damage: make sure you put a quality tenant inside your property.
Tenant Screening
Do your due diligence when you have an applicant. Verify income and employment. Run a credit check and a criminal background check. Talk to previous housing providers. These things will help you ensure you’re putting the best possible tenant in your property. If you can do that, you’ll save yourself headaches later. This type of screening takes time and special tools, but if you screen applicants well, you’ll have good tenants.
Security Deposits
You don’t want to charge a security deposit that’s too high, because you’ll scare off potentially great tenants. You also don’t want to charge too little because tenants won’t care about the money they might lose. If the security deposit on a $2,000 rental home is only $500, tenants aren’t going to care about the damage they might do. Match the security deposit to the rent. In California, you can charge up to two times the monthly rent for a security deposit on an unfurnished property.
On a furnished property, you can collect up to three times the monthly rent. We recommend that you collect a security deposit that matches one month’s rent or one and a half month’s rent. These are acceptable amounts for good tenants.
Inspections
Another big mistake is using unlicensed vendors to work on your property. This may save you a couple of bucks in maintenance costs, but in the long run, it costs you so much more. Either you’ll find the work was not done correctly or the materials are not holding up. You’ll need to change the carpet between every single tenant or have the same job done again. Or, something will happen and a tenant will get hurt and sue you. You’ll find yourself in court, where you’ll have to admit to using someone without a contractor’s license. Don’t work with vendors who are unlicensed.
Professional Landscaping
This might sound like an additional expense but we see it as an investment. What we call a simple mow and blow service will cost you between $50 and $75 per month. It allows someone to be in the front and back yards twice a month, looking for things. We have trained people taking care of our yards to look for red flags that might concern us. When you have eyes on the property as much as possible, you mitigate the risk of tenant damage.
CONTACT US TODAY!
If you’d like to hear more information about protecting your property, please contact us at Wolfgang Property Management.