Chapter 2

Pre-Screen Tenants to Save Time

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The Complete Guide to Tenant Screening

tenant pre screening questions that save time

Tenant screening can be a time-consuming process, but this step to managing your rental can take less time if you use pre-screening to your advantage. Pre-screening helps you eliminate any candidate who doesn’t fit your initial criteria and may not be as interested in renting your property.

Pre-screening also enhances your overall screening process by allowing you to set expectations for your rental process early on, which will help you attract quality tenants.

To help you improve your process, we’ve outlined three easy steps to screen tenants and the best tenant prescreening questions to ask right away.

3 Steps to Properly Screen Tenants

If you’re just starting out as a landlord, screening tenants may seem like a daunting task to complete. But with these three steps, you’ll be able to find quality tenants and fill vacancies with confidence. Here are the three main steps to screening a tenant:

1. Use Your Rental Listing to Screen Tenants 

Your rental listing is how you find quality tenants and the first point of contact between you and the thousands of tenants who might see your listing. To attract quality tenants, you should write a catchy title, describe your property in an impressive way, and upload great photos.

You need to generate tenant interest to avoid a rental vacancy, but attracting a high number of tenant leads makes your tenant screening process an uphill battle. You want only the best tenants to reach out to you. In order to attract the best tenants, we recommend including this sentence in your property description:

“Applicants are required to complete a rental application and authorize a $55 credit, eviction, and background check.”

Adding a sentence tailored to your screening fees effectively communicates to tenants what is expected of them. If the screening fee is too expensive for a tenant, or they don’t want to authorize a credit or background check, then they likely won’t reach out.

2. Ask Tenant Prescreening Questions

Once a tenant reaches out, they’ve officially become a tenant lead. Listings with Avail typically receive an average of 18 tenant leads, so our platform makes it easy for you to manage tenant leads with ease. Typically, a tenant will reach out via email or phone. In your initial contact, you should ask the following prescreening questions for your tenants:

  • Why are you moving?
  • What is your current living situation?
  • When are you looking to move in?
  • Can I ask for references from your former landlords and employer?
  • Will you submit a rental application and authorize a credit and background check?
  • The security deposit is $X. Are you comfortable with that deposit amount?
  • Do you have pets?
  • Do you smoke?
  • Will you have roommates?

This can be a lot of questions to ask all up front, but it will give you the best sense of how qualified a tenant lead is from the start.

3. Screen Tenants at the Property Showing

Tenants typically reach out about 30-60 days before needing a new place to live, which means the entire tenant screening process occurs in a limited time span. This also means the property showing is likely the only time you meet a prospective tenant before making a decision.

At the property showing, pay attention to whether the tenant:

  • Shows up on time
  • Asks important questions
  • Remains interested and engaged
  • Agrees to complete a rental application
  • Authorizes a credit and background check
  • Discusses moving forward in the process

If the tenant checks all of these boxes, then you should move forward.

Pre-Screening and Rental Applications

Pre-screening is a simple way for you to attract quality tenants, screen them, and save yourself time down the road. If you’ve followed our steps and found great tenant leads, then the next step is asking them to fill out rental applications.

Next, we’ll go over everything you need to know about reviewing rental applications.