Quality tenant selection is the most important function for any property investor, yet a bad tenant will never come along and announce that they’re trouble at the tenancy application stage!

Bad tenants dress well, are polite, and can look polished when you meet them.

You need to look carefully for the warning signs and always be wary. That said, it’s always best to have an experienced agent to manage your property, as inexperience will most certainly catch out the unwary when it comes to tenant selection.

These eight things may not (on their own) indicate you have a bad tenant; however, asking questions and taking a better look can uncover the issues when you probe deeper, should you see the warning signs.

Here they are:

#1- Application Blanks and Unanswered Questions

Especially after you’ve made a point that all application forms need to be completed correctly and fully answered to be processed, if you receive vagueness in the answers or just basic information missing, you need to ask questions. Sometimes a bad tenant is simply hoping for an ‘order taker’ who pays little attention and care to process applications carefully and hopes their missing or vague information will get overlooked.

#2- Wrong Address Information

When you’ve asked for identification copies and utility accounts that have their current and previous residence addresses, check these details against what they said as their current and previous address on their application form. If the information is different and does not, start asking questions.

#3- Overdue Utility Accounts

As part of your application process, you should be asking for copies of current utility accounts like electricity and gas. This gives you their current address so that you can confirm this. Pay attention if these accounts are showing ‘overdue’, ‘pay now or you’ll get disconnected’. This could be a warning sign to take note of.

#4- Smelly/Stained Applications (Paper Application)

If you’re using a paper application form and it comes back stinking of cigarettes, coffee, and/or food stains, pay attention. This could very well be another warning sign to take heed.

#5- Wrong Current Residence Story

When you first speak with an applicant for the very first time by phone or meet them at a property viewing, always ask right up front, ‘Are you renting at the moment?’

Then take note of their answer and their name.

When you get their formal application form that gives you another story about their current residential status, which has changed from what they originally said, take notice. This could easily be a warning sign.

#6- Drive-By The Outside of their Current Property

If you have the opportunity to be within driving distance from their current property noted on their utility accounts and application form, make sure you take a drive-by. How they’ve presented the front (if it has a yard) could tell you a lot about how they will look after your rental property.

#7- Default on a Tenancy Default Database

A pretty obvious warning sign to take heed that only real estate agents have access to. Talk to us about our application process and what databases we check all applications against.

#8- ‘Friends and Family’ Backstory

A person moving out of their family home at 18 years of age will likely not have a checkable rental history. However, what if it’s someone in their thirties who tells you they’ve always lived with friends and family? If this scenario doesn’t make sense, start asking more questions. It could be that they’re staying with friends and relatives simply because they were evicted from their last residence.

When it comes to tenant selection, you cannot go past the rule of ‘previous behaviour dictates future performance’, and without a checkable tenancy history, you can run the risk of accepting a bad tenant.

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