The single biggest predictor of a profitable rental year is who’s living in the unit. A great tenant pays on time, takes care of the place, and stays. A bad one costs you cash flow, repairs, and weeks of vacancy turning the unit. Our placement process is built around screening seriously enough to filter for the first kind.
- Listing and marketing — photo prep, listings on the major rental platforms, response management
- Showings — in-person and self-tour where appropriate
- Application processing — credit, background, eviction history, employment and income verification
- Reference checks — current and prior landlord, where applicable
- Lease execution — state-compliant lease tailored to the property
- Move-in coordination — condition report, key handover, deposit handling
- Pet screening — separate process, clear pet-policy enforcement
We follow a written, fair-housing-compliant rubric so every applicant is scored on the same criteria. Income-to-rent ratio, credit history, eviction filings, and rental references each have explicit weight. The result is a defensible, consistent process that puts good tenants in your unit and limits your liability.
The hardest applications are the ones that look almost-okay on paper. A 580 credit score with a strong income, a 700 score with two prior late payments, an applicant whose prior landlord won’t return calls. We have written policies for the gray-area cases so the answer isn’t being made up call-by-call.
Listing quality drives applicant quality. Bad phone photos and a four-line description attract a different population than good lighting, a thoughtful walkthrough video, and listing copy that highlights actual amenities. We treat every listing as a marketing job — because the alternative is vacancy.
Self-tour technology has changed the math on showings. For some properties and price points, a code-based self-tour after pre-screening reaches more applicants and filters out the casual lookers. For others — higher-end units, units where the neighbors share a wall, properties that show better in person — staffed showings still earn their cost. We’ll recommend the approach that fits the property, not a one-size policy.
A lease that’s been copied off the internet doesn’t protect you in the cases where you’d actually need it: the security deposit dispute, the early termination, the disputed damage, the chronically-late payer. We use a state-compliant lease tailored to the specific property — pet policies, parking, smoking, lawn care responsibilities, utility splits — so the rules are clear before either party signs.