Avoiding Nightmare Tenants
As a landlord, you may have heard (or experienced) enough tenant horror stories to create a TV show called “Landlord Nightmares” … and then film eight seasons. It’s a guarantee that you’d rather not evict a tenant for their behavior in your rental. If you or your property management company don’t choose tenants carefully, however, an eviction might be exactly what you end up with.
Of course, you want to avoid difficult tenants and find renters who will respect you and the lease agreement, but you have to know what signs to watch out for and how to spot the bad ones before they can move onto your property.
Let’s look at some of the tenants you should be on the lookout for and how to avoid them before you’re forced to deal with the expensive, time-consuming process of an eviction.
Types of Nightmare Tenants in Rental Property
There are a variety of tenant behaviors that you don’t want to see as a landlord, but some problematic tenants are much worse than others. Let’s explore some of the worst nightmare tenant situations you can find yourself in.
1. Tenants Who Won’t Leave
When a tenant’s move-out date comes and goes without a word from your tenant and you can’t reach them to retrieve your keys and inspect the property, your suspicions may unfortunately be true: they’ve become “holdover tenants.” A holdover tenant is a tenant who either refuses to leave the unit after their lease’s agreed-upon end date or stops paying rent entirely while continuing to live in your unit. Holdover tenants are extremely frustrating, because it can be a time-consuming process to evict them from the premises.
No matter how upsetting the situation may be, don’t ever take matters into your own hands by attempting a “self-help” eviction—that is, changing the locks, turning off utilities, or verbally intimidating holdover tenants on your property. It may seem unfair, but evicting holdover tenants involves following a strict legal process, and if you bypass the system to try to get them out on your own, you could be the one with criminal charges in the end.
2. Tenants Who Damage Your Property
Walking through your unit after a tenant has moved out and finding broken windows or locks, holes in the walls, and large stains on the floor can be discouraging, especially when the apartment is also left unclean. This kind of tenant may even add insult to injury and steal some of your property on their way out. Now, you have the inconvenient task of replacing furniture or appliances, hiring a professional to fix the damage and clean, and charging the tenant for the damage they caused.
If the tenant is still living on the property when you notice the damage, it’s good to start by talking to them about it before taking any further action. If the tenant becomes spiteful and damages the unit further, though, you can seek legal counsel to consider eviction or other legal avenues for fixing the problem. Tenant damage to an extreme degree is the exception rather than the norm, but it’s good to prepare for every possible situation if bad tenants slip through the cracks and end up in your units.
3. Tenants Who Stop Paying Rent
The most direct tenant threat to your business is a tenant who stops paying rent (or hasn’t paid at all since they’ve moved in), as this directly impacts your rental income. This type of bad tenant goes hand in hand with holdover tenants since both are occupying your property without fulfilling their lease requirements.
Remember, a tenant who pays their rent a few days late one month isn’t necessarily a nightmare tenant — sometimes, a tenant is forgetful or has a delay in their paycheck — but keep an eye out for a pattern of this behavior. Missing rent payments can happen for many reasons, but it’s best to avoid tenants who don’t consistently pay rent or stop paying altogether because it hurts your rental business and consumes your time and energy.
Using Tenant Screening to Avoid Problematic Tenants
After imagining these nightmare scenarios, you’re probably wondering what you can do to mitigate these issues and bring in tenants who pay rent on time, keep your property clean, and communicate with you. Luckily, we have the answer: A thorough tenant screening process.
There are many methods of tenant screening you can utilize when looking for a prospective tenant to fill your unit, but we recommend using property management software to automate and simplify the process from start to finish. Property management software allows you not only to screen potential tenants but also to manage tenants after they’ve moved onto your property by offering autopay and reminder features for those forgetful tenants.
One of the best ways to screen tenants is through tenant screening reports, usually including credit, eviction, and criminal histories. With many property management software platforms, you can request reports and charge tenants a fee directly through the software, making it quick and easy to get critical information about the behavior of a potential renter. This will allow you to see a history of problems a problematic tenant might have, like prior evictions they’ve experienced if they’ve struggled to pay rent in the past.
You can also use a rental application to get information that might not be available anywhere else. Following up with previous landlords can tell you if tenants paid rent on time, left the apartment clean, or violated their lease agreements in any way, and checking in with an employer can verify a tenant’s income. Rental applications and templates are often available on property management software platforms so your tenants can digitally receive and complete them without having to meet in person.
Conclusion
Property owners often face challenges in managing difficult tenants, so make a list of the attributes that matter most to you and search for them in your tenant screening. If done right, you’ll be able to fill your units quickly and effectively, keeping nightmare tenants away from the very beginning of the process… and you’ll hopefully never have to watch or film an episode of “Landlord Nightmares.”
