As I’ve mentioned many times before, a key aspect of the American Dream is homeownership - and rightly so. Homeownership leads to a stable home environment for individuals and families, and brings value to the surrounding community. Unfortunately, the recession we experienced in the late 2000s led to abrupt job losses and record numbers of Americans losing their homes.

In part two of our "tips to becoming a better landlord in Central Florida" series we talked about the importance of background and credit checks when it comes to finding the perfect tenant for your investment property. No one likes a bad surprise and taking these preventative measures will ensure that doesn't happen to you.   

So....you’ve now found who you think will be THE tenant for you. What’s next?

In part one of our "tips to becoming a better landlord in Central Florida" series we talked about the nitty gritty details to getting an investment property move-in-ready in order to find the right tenant. Now that you’ve got the home primed and ready for showing to the hordes of people looking to rent, you’ll need to qualify the prospective Tenant. 

There are numerous programs out there that will help you in doing a check of your prospective Tenant. When weighing your options, be sure to let the firm handling the background/credit check know your criteria. For the background check, it will be your decision to determine what you’re willing to accept and decline. Is an unpaid parking ticket okay? How about a DUI? These are ultimately decisions that you are going to have to make. Are you looking for a certain credit score? Keep in mind that if you are looking for that perfect score, it’s not likely to happen. Most people these days are recovering from the market crash that happened a few years back and are still trying to rebuild their credit scores and history back up. A little flexibility on your part might be needed now and perhaps not so much a few more years down the line.