How does the rental / leasing process work?

When someone is interested in your property, they can easily apply online 24/7. Our application procedure involves: 

· A national credit and background check 

· Current employee / income verification 

· Several years past rental history including eviction search 

· A proven proprietary method for generating honest responses to open ended questions regarding the tenant’s situation.  

We then analyze the full picture rather than simply the notoriously narrow beacon score. We for example apply little weight to medical and education collections, and have found phenomenal tenant values by being open to those issues.  Our method has served us extremely well, as over the past decade including through COVID we have rarely had to evict tenants we chose. During COVID about 1% of tenants we chose had serious payment issues they didn’t rectify 

If the applicant passes our screening process, we will instruct them to pay the security deposit within 24-48 hours, or risk losing the home. We almost always collect at least one full month’s rent as a security deposit, but often much more 

We will then execute the lease and send a finalized copy to you. We do not have owners sign the lease as it presents serious challenges to evictions and other potential legal proceedings. If you have lease concerns or requests we must discuss these in advance.  You can view a sample copy of our lease here.  We utilize a standard lease derived from a version written by the NC Bar Association.  It is thorough, conservative, clear,  proven in court, written by judges, and not only comprehensively covers each state we operate in but would be an excellent lease across most of the nation 

We usually press tenants to sign a two year lease as reducing turnover can be a major contributor to bottom line profitability, but they’re very hard to come by these days. We usually require at least a one year commitment. In some situations (seasonal or road work related etc) we may find a shorter term to be beneficial, but we’ll outline our reasoning in these instances. Seasonal issues are the most common reason for shorter term leases as we prefer spring turnovers to such a degree, shaving a couple of months off can make a lot of sense.  We have an extensive policy on timing our leases for seasonal up swings .  You can view seasonal vacacy tips here 

We then typically handle the bulk of our accounting and owner payments around the 10th, and 17th, and 23rd of the month. In most cases we do not disburse funds until the tenant has moved into the property. The tenant’s security deposit is held in an escrow account per state real estate law.