Despite the media’s focus on bad tenant and landlord experiences over the past few months, surprisingly many Wellington landlords still aren’t covering their bases and conducting basic reference checks before creating a new tenancy. To make it easy, we’ve outlined the best approach to reference checking potential tenants.
Trust your Instincts
At viewings, try to interview each applicant to get an idea of them as a person. Trust your instincts, if they seem great in person and you get on well with them, they’ll likely be good, reliable tenants. Interviewing them at the viewing helps make the reference checking process easier because you already have an idea about which tenants to more thoroughly reference check first.
Request Information & Photo ID
Don’t just leave it to your gut instinct to choose your next tenants. Always ask prospective tenants to fill out a Tenancy Application Form before or during the viewing. This will outline their basic information, references, and the reason why they’re leaving their current property.
Call Their References
We always triple reference check each applicant to make sure we get reliable tenants in the property who will pay their rent on time and care for the property. We always call their current landlord, the current employee, plus a personal reference. This helps us get a good indication of their reliability, character, and verifies their employment.
Credit Check
It’s better to conduct a credit check now, than lose money later when you find out the hard way about their bad credit score. Credit checks help highlight any red flags that can be crucial in determining their ability to reliably make rent payments on time.
Bottom Line
A number of landlords may find the idea of reference checking overwhelming, but once you have a process in place, it soon becomes simple, efficient and effective. If you’re looking to tenant your property, I’d welcome the opportunity to have a chat. We have a database of 3,855 tenants actively looking for rental properties in Wellington, and by direct marketing properties to this list we find we get good, reliable tenants quicker and at a higher rent than if we simply advertised the property online.
If you're considering Property Management get in touch with us today. Locally owned and managed, we offer residential property management services across the entire Wellington & Hutt Valley region.
We take care of investments, offering peace of mind and a personal service to investors and tenants alike. Our solutions are backed by industry-leading technology and proven systems that promote both excellent property care and strong investment returns. Taking on all aspects of the landlord’s role, we guide our clients with professional, tailored advice using our extensive experience and insight in the rental market that can only be built over time.
If you would like to chat about the possibility of working together, or to receive a no-obligation, FREE Rental Appraisal get in touch with our team today.
Quinovic Johnsonville | Wellington
Call Jordan Atkinson - 027 297 0873
Quinovic Hutt Valley | Wellington
Call Helen Vance - 027 487 8103
Quinovic Kent Terrace | Wellington
Call Jordan Atkinson - 027 297 0873
Quinovic Wellington Property Management