Every Landlord’s Guide to Finding Great Tenants
August 3, 2010 by: nickadmin
- ISBN13: 9781413308648
- Condition: New
- Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
Product DescriptionSearching for the perfect tenant? Get the only book devoted to the most important decision a landlord can make! Landlords face many challenges, but choosing new tenants has the greatest potential to affect your bottom line. Fortunately, Every Landlord’s Guide to Finding Great Tenants can help! Let this book guide you through the process of attracting, screening and choosing the best renters possible. It covers: effective advertising phone screening presenting the unit evaluating applications examining credit reports checking references discrimination basics making a rental offer rejecting applicants and much more Ev. . . More >>
I just read the 2nd Edition of “Every Landlord’s Guide to Finding Great Tenants” by Janet Portman, the author of “Every Landlord’s Legal Guide. ” This book is a great resource for the new landlord who will do everything him or herself.
The book contains chapters on the following topics:
One: Choosing Good Tenants Makes Good Business Sense
Two: Complying With Discrimination Laws
Three: How to Deal with Current Tenants – Before You Look for New Ones
Four: How to Advertise Effectively
Five: How Should You Show Your Rental?
Six: Preparing Your Rental Application and Screening Materials
Seven: Fielding Initial Questions and Phone Screening
Eight: Prepare Your Rental for an Open House or Showing
Nine: Face to Face: Showing the Rental and negotiating with Prospective Tenants
Ten: Evaluating Rental Applications
Eleven: Checking Applicants’ Credit Reports
Twelve: Checking Landlord, Employer, and Personal References
Thirteen: checking Applicants’ Criminal Backgrounds
Fourteen: How to Choose and Work With a Tenant-Screening Agency
Fifteen: Choosing Your New Tenant
Sixteen: How to Reject – What to Say, What to Write
Again, this book is good for the landlords who choose to do most of the work themselves while owing a few rentals. It is also very good for the novice or beginning landlord. If you are just getting started, this book and “Every Landlord’s Legal Guide” can be very useful.
Some of the information may seem to basic for some, or just common sense. Well, when you are just starting a business, and being a landlord is a business, there are many things to take care of, and it is nice to have even the simple stuff outlined in a text so you don’t overlook it. This is especially true for those that are trying to be landlords on the side.
The book with index runs 465 pages and is easy to read. Nolo really does a good job of providing legal information in an easy format for everyone to understand. Portman is the author of several Nolo books, and this is the second one of hers that I’ve read and I like the information she provides. There are ample side-bars, sample documents, highlighted points, and graphs. It is laid out well and reader friendly. There is also a CD-ROM included with the book that contains forms and checklists as well as audio files that have sample dialogs to conduct interviews and such.
This book contains a lot of useful information. If you are in business, you need to have the information to succeed. This book would go well on any landlord’s shelf. It would be part of a collection of books and resources to assist with a property owning business and how to be a landlord. If you are a landlord, especially a beginning landlord, I’d suggest getting this book and use Portman’s advice on Finding Great Tenants.
Reviewed by Alain Burrese, J. D. , author of Hard-Won Wisdom From the School of Hard Knocks and the dvds: Hapkido Hoshinsul, Streetfighting Essentials, Hapkido Cane, the Lock On Joint Locking Essentials series and articles including a regular column on negotiation for The Montana Lawyer. Alain Also wrote a series of articles called Lessons From The Apprentice.
Rating: 5 / 5
Even with the inital flip-through of this book I was coming across things that gave that sudden light-bulb-on moment, as in wow, what a great idea. We are fairly new to the landlord business and just have a single unit that we are leasing out, so while this book is directed almost more towards multi-unit dwellings and multiple listings, it certainly does not exclude those leasing on a smaller scale. I really appreciate the legal charts, for example the one on deposit return timelines, that are broken up by state and list the law for easier reference. The examples of forms and letters are a great help and will be key in being better organized when it comes time to find a tenant again. I also found it helpful that it deals not just with finding new tenants but also dealing with the one leaving. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone with property to lease, and even to people who are looking to rent, for an easy-to-read, very thorough look at the rental process.
Rating: 5 / 5
I’ve read a lot of books on rental properties, I particularly like ones that deal with state laws but spell it out to you in a more simple manner. I’m a Real Estate Broker, and have been doing rentals for about 5 years now. I find most landlords approach rental properties as “I’m the boss, I make the rules”. Little do they know they’re often breaking laws and opening themselves up for a discrimination or fair housing lawsuit. This book gave great details on how to avoid those situations. It also comes with a CD-rom with tons of great forms you’ll need or that will help you get organized.
I rarely find a book that tells me a law or suggestion that I haven’t already read or found out about on my own. This book delves into particulars of such as how to phrase things, questions you legally shouldn’t be asking, and ways to get the kind of tenant you’re looking for. Some might find it tedious, but on the whole I think it would be a wonderful reference to go to if you have a problem or question during the rental process if you have decided to give it a try on your own
This book is great and has everything from preparing the rental, to talking on the phone with potential renters, to figuring out credit reports. But it stops at either accepting or denying them, and doesn’t really get into lease terms or lease paperwork in general. It’s really the process of preparing & showing, and going thru the application process. It doesn’t deal with after that, for instance if you tenants who have a problem a year after moving in. You should look to a different book for lease paperwork, maintaining tenants and state laws regarding both. Leases on a whole could be an entire separate book and definitely keep that in mind because they’re not a piece of cake.
Though many landlords are DIY’ers when it comes to renting their properties, I would personally recommend that every landlord use a Broker. I see landlords who having been renting apartments longer then I’ve been in existence, and they’re stuck in their ways and making mistakes. Beyond that, I see so many landlords that insist on coming in for the showing, and they either like the potential tenant and get over eager, or just say something that scares them off. For the most part, an owner has an emotional attachment to the property. Using a broker who is calm and will just show them around without emotional attachment is really your best bet. Many times I’ve heard someone say “I really like the apartment, but the landlord makes me nervous”.
If not to find the tenants, a Broker can help you do and provide the proper paperwork that baffles most. For a small fee, they’ll do background checks, credit reports and write the lease for you. A good Broker knows red flags and don’t rely on how they “feel” about the applicant. They go on fact. Spending a couple hundred bucks is going to be cheaper in the long run then breaking a fair housing law and getting sued for thousands.
Definitely check out this book for an excellent reference in the beginning of the rental process, but be forewarned, there is a bucket load more, this only covers the 1st few steps.
Rating: 5 / 5
Every Landlord’s Guide to Finding Great Tenants is extremely helpful in understanding how to avoid legal pitfalls. It also gives guidance, in great detail, on the tenant search process and includes checklists and forms for landlords and property managers to use when filling vacancies. The book contains valuable information on how to avoid discrimination cases and includes state laws on deposit amounts, credit checks and background checks.
If you are buying this book mainly for the CD, you should know the CD is difficult to use as the forms are not formatted as a Word document and thus the printed forms have inappropriate page breaks, which require manipulation to remedy unprofessional looking documents. If you want to use the printed forms they are available in PDF format but cannot be customized. Also this product contains all the forms you need when filling a rental vacancy with the exception of the actual lease. It would be enhanced if a sample rental agreement or lease was included.
Rating: 4 / 5
The forms on the CD are very helpful as they give you good information and they are editable in any word processor so you can still add info you would like. I liked the information in the book and found it helpful though I wish they had presented it in a more concise fashion. The book was longer than necessary. If you do not have experience with being a landlord, I would advise this book as it gives a wide range of info in a single book and provides you all the forms you will need.
Rating: 4 / 5