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Episode 7. Today we are lighting up landlording. As always, the goal on this show is to shine a light on people, st rategies, systems, and ideas that will help you meet your real estate investing goals. Do you currently manage your own properties or are you considering becoming a landlord and you need tools and systems to find the right tenants? Al exandra A lvaradoTenantAlert.com joins the show.
She breaks down how TenantAlert can help your business choose the right tenant for your residential, multiunit and even commercial property. This episode is full of strategies, tools and most importantly systems that you can start today. I personally use TenantAlert.com and near the end of the show, Alexandra shares a strategy for listing your property online that is a game changer ,that I didn't even know was available. She also has a free gift for the listeners today. Let's go.
Alexandra, welcome to Lighting Up Real Estate.
Thank you for having me Candle. So glad that you invited me on.
I am personally, I'm excited that you accepted my invitation because I use your company for several transactions that I've had with my clients and also with my own properties as well. And I've reached out to you like, "Hey, you know, I wrote a blog post about you guys and I just want you to know about it" because I really did and I didn't want anything in return.
I just really liked your system and you made it incredibly easy for me, for me and for my investors to find tenants for our properties. So I'm just really glad to have you on this platform today so that you can be of course an asset to anybody that's listening and like, Hey, we want to get into being a landlord. We don't want to pay a property management company, but we don't know where to find our tenants or how to screen them. This is where you come in.
Yeah, absolutely. That is what we do. We try to keep landlords from making mistakes when it comes to renting. It's always easier to get somebody in than it is to get them out. If you have a problem later.
Exactly. Exactly. So, okay, tell us about why tenet alert.com was created.
Well actually the founder of the company, he was a landlord himself. He also managed his own properties and at that time he wanted a solution that would really help him to identify which tenants were good and which warrant he was tired of paying other companies to really do the service for him and he thought he could do a better job. And then eventually over time, started way before internet age, once internet came around he said, well we could just do all of this online.
There's really no need for us to, you know, be digging through files or investigating. And back then it was really hard to screen a tenant. And I think once the internet came around they, he was really one of the first people to take advantage of that and streamline that process. And since then, you know, we've added a bunch of stuff and it's really become more thorough and more instant. It is as instant as ever. You probably know that Candle, it's just a few seconds.
And people are always amazed at how quickly you can pull so much information and really how affordably you can do it now as well. And it wasn't always like that.
And so the idea was always how to help landlords find good tenants and you know, it's just evolved and it's just gotten easier and easier and more cost effective as time has gone on and we still do it and we have a ton of people using it and they all benefit from that very quick response, very quick red flag, Hey, you know, watch out for this tenant. And that, that's really was the whole goal and it still is.
Right. I agree with that. Is this product, I've used it for residential only, is it, is it also available or can it be used to apply in multi-units or commercial?
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So, you know, we have some commercial landlords that even, you know, they rent out retail space or office space, whatever it is, and they'll not only do a screening on the individual, but we also have a product called a business credit reports where we can actually pull the credit report of a business and see how much debt that business has, the likelihood that they're going to go into bankruptcy or how often they make payments to their creditors.
So, you know, there's always businesses that they pay late, like regularly, right? Like there's some businesses that always run on a 30, 60 or 90 day late payment cycle. So if you're renting to a business, you can find out if that business is in a habit of paying those bills late, kind of assess your risk in addition to also maybe screening the actual owner and what their credit looks like cause that might have an effect on their ability to pay as well, obviously.
So , there definitely are even additional tools for commercial landlords as well.
Okay. So walk us through, let's say we are, this does keep a simple. We are starting out, we're getting our first property and it's a single family residential home and we've decided that we want to take control of the management of our property and we find TenetAlert.com and we're listening to this podcast and we are interested, we're going to the website. What would be the first things that we need to do? How do we do this process?
Sure. So really it's very simple. I mean a lot of landlords, especially in like smaller residential, they might want to get an application right then and there when they come and look at the place. So they might maybe have the tenant fill out some information about themselves and give them permission to run a background check.
Then the landlord can go to the website and basically click "Order Now" for a credit criminal eviction, that's usually like the most common and all they have to do is enter the tenant's name and email and then decide whether the landlord wants to pay for it or whether they want the tenant to pay for it. And as you can imagine in most cases, the landlord does want the tenant to pay for it, right?
So then once that's done, email gets sent to the tenant, the tenant fills out their information online and puts in their card to pay for it and a couple seconds later landlord gets an email with the full report. That's pretty simple.
Okay, so let me get the report. What exactly will we be seeing?
Yeah, so always a credit report. I mean that's going to be the most important part I think in knowing whether somebody can afford the rental. I mean you have, you know, late payments, you can see how much debt they have, how much they pay every month towards that debt. Their credit score obviously is the most obvious one. So having like a low credit score is a big red flag. But at the same time, sometimes people who don't have a lot of credit history might not have the highest score.
So you look at like the whole report determine whether or not it's kind of a risky person. And then of course criminal including sex offender records, which is super important. And then the eviction records. So looking at has this person ever been taken to court and had an eviction judgment against them?
That's huge. And also knowing what addresses they've lived at. So we also pull all the addresses where they might've lived based on their social. So you can see, you know, does it, does it add up? Does it add up with what their story says? Does it make sense? And then if their social is wrong , it's pretty obvious, you know? So you also get to kind of verify a person's social and identity based on the report. So now, you know, okay, this person gave me the right information about themselves.
What's their financial standing and do they have a criminal background or a history of being evicted? T hat's true. So you said something very important about their story. My mom, I learned how to real estate invest through her Alexandria . And she always said, well, candle, they're not going to have the perfect credit. If they had perfect credit, they'd be owning a house and they wouldn't need us.
So this is have a little mercy on, on their, you know, their background check and their credit history. So now when I am, you know, vetting or you know , looking at these reports that we get from you all, I just asked for the story before I even look at it like tell me your story and I'm taking notes. Okay, so what happened here? So why did you have that on your credit report there ?
Why didn't, so as long as the story is matching and it's making sense and it's like okay they might be a little bit credible. So I'm looking for that alignment when I'm looking at the reports that you guys said cause I did that is so important because they're not going to have perfect credit.
Yeah, it's true. And that's the thing too, it's like it really is about the story and the biggest red flag I think anybody can get is a lot of people think it's the credit score and they f ocus so much on the credit score and i t's l ike, well I don't know if that really says a whole lot about people. Honestly, I've seen credit reports where I completely disagree about the credit score. And sometimes you look at the report and you as a, as a human being, okay.
And you've heard the story, like you said, you're, you're asking them, you know, what, what, where are you coming from? Why are you moving those kinds of questions. So you kind of have an idea of this person and then you know, the score is actually not coming from a human, you know, that's a , that's an algorithm. It's not perfect. It's all automated.
So sometimes yes, it does really help to have that data, but then also interpreting it with a human eye is really where you're able to determine your risks . So it's part science, it's also part, you know, just being a human and having emotional intelligence and picking up on people, being dishonest with you. And then finding out if like the story matches. So obviously if somebody went through a rough patch, like you'll be able to tell from the credit report.
So let's say we have someone that their report comes back really bad Alexandra and we're just like, Hey, we don't know, you know, go back and you know , fix, maybe make a little bit more money, you know, to pay down some of these bills and create a better report. How long is this report good for? So let's say they come back to our apartment complex in three months and they want to reapply again.
s this still good for, for three months or should they reapply to see if it's changed or what do you recommend?
Yeah. And you know, it's interesting you say that because credit reports do change actually even on a daily basis, it can be different. It's not going to be probably that different i n just a few months c ause it does take some time to build credit, if that's the issue. But I would say, you know, really the best thing somebody can do is to pay their bills on time. If they're looking to get their credit score higher.
And that means, you know, having less debt to carry around on a monthly basis, paying that down and paying it on time. So that's g oing t o make a big difference. And then also t oo, you know, you don't necessarily have to have them wait. You could get "Lease Guarantee" if y ou w ant to rent faster. So at least guarantee you something that's a little unique to us. We do offer a lease guarantee program for tenants who qualify that are maybe not the best but not so terrible either.
It kind of like those in between people and basically if you get a lease guarantee on one of those tenants and then later on something happens, let's say you have to evict them, you get reimbursed for the court judgment and so you can actually get that money back in your pocket. If let's say down the line, that tenant doesn't work out and so that's a good one to do for these kind of higher risk tenants that you might not want to turn away.
You might not be so bad where maybe they don't have any evictions, but maybe their credit isn't that great right now. But maybe if you have them by lease guarantee as a condition of renting to them to protect yourself a little bit.
You have the tenant purchase it?
Yes. Y eah, most of the time. Most of the time. So I mean we do offer the option for landlords to pay for it, but I, from what I've heard, most landlords just end up billing the tenant for it anyway. So it becomes more like, almost like an additional requirement.
So just like you might want somebody to get a co-signer or you might want them to pay extra security deposit, having l ease guarantees, something else that you could offer that protects you so that you're not renting to somebody, you know, that might end up owing you a lot of money later and then you never see that money. S o the idea is y ou, you get, you get more protection and the p roduction r ange i s up to $10,000. So, I mean you can really get a lot out of it.
Even make it an addition to a security deposit and then you're really solid. So you have the security deposit to dip into. And then if you took them to court, you also know that you're going to get that money in your pocket from lease guarantee.
Nice, nice. So does that report also show any evictions from previous landlords?
Yeah, absolutely. So most of our reports do have an eviction report in it and if somebody does have an eviction report, they can still qualify for lease guarantee. Even if they have an eviction. Now, if they have more than two, they won't. But it is still possible for them to qualify. And you would be able to see if they've been evicted. And that's something where I know some landlords, they have a very strict policy, no evictions. And I totally understand that.
Going back to, you know, hearing about somebody's story and realizing maybe where they have come from or how long ago the eviction happened because the evictions, they go back seven years. So, I mean, I'm still pretty young, but I know seven years ago I was nowhere near the financial stability that we have now. And that can change in a big way.
And especially if that person, you know, maybe they did pay the landlord the judgment , maybe they did pay their debts and now they're in a better place and they have a job and you know in that happened a long time ago, you can maybe consider that still. So you know, you have to look at multiple factors, look at the person's story, and then if you still don't feel comfortable getting least guarantee can be that extra thing that makes you feel like your risk is lower.
Right, and as I recall, you also have a r e a report card that you give each tenant.
Yeah, absolutely. Tenants select. So that's our own algorithm . So we start people, like you said, like a report card, a hundred points is an a plus basically. And then you know, you go 75 to an under 50 that that would be like a C, right? And then underneath 50 would be like failing. So we deduct points for every negative thing that we find on the credit report. And that's like an initial red flag indicator.
So obviously somebody who has like are deep into the red, that's something you should be looking at and finding out why, why did they come back rated so low? So that's another great tool to just like initially it's at the top of every report just to see, you know, where the red flags are.
Right. Cause I remember one time, I think me and my, my investors, we had used tinted alert t o I guess do a background check on a prospect and the score was so incredibly bad. I remember seeing r ed that you guys wouldn't even do the l ease guarantee on it. And the story was so good that he said, and I'm like, you guys [ inaudible] we can't even i s he has a F we have no lease guarantee. I don't think we need to go onto the next one.
And I remember and they wanted him and I said, I'll tell you what, let's ask hi m t o see if we can get, you know, three months of th eir, of a checking account statement and see if there's money le ft o v er i n the checking account. And th ere i t was right there. And I'm like, this is why they go t a n F on that report card and no le ase g u arantee b ecause they had no money to carry over. But they ha d, I think it was the car, they had a very expensive car.
They were driving and they were saying in the industry that they were in th ere m aking a lot of money but we didn't see it. So it was kind of like that was, that was a sign right there. And I'm so glad that you guys did have that red landlords. We are guilty of the minute someone says, we want to get your house and we have first month's rent, last month's rent and all this stuff upfront . We want the money, just get them in and start paying. But it doesn't always happen like that.
And I think that this is why this is so crucial because we made those mistakes of getting them in and then we're having to have the conversation of, okay we've got to figure out how to evict them cause they're not paying the rent. They haven't paid for the last three months.
Yeah. And absolutely like that happens all the time too. It's so funny cause like I'll, I'll be on the phone like similar to you with your investor. I'll be on the phone with a landlord and you know, I'm looking at the report and I'm just like, gosh, this is terrible. You know, and if they don't qualify for lease guarantee, that's really bad because lease guarantee has a pretty low requirements. That's kind of the whole point, right?
It's to help get these lower, these higher risk tenant protection. So I'm looking at it and I'm like, well like, you know, why would you rent to this person? And they insist, insist. I mean it's, it's sometimes to the point where I'm just like, I don't want to tell you what to do, but I don't think this is a good idea. And some landlords will like try to convince themselves that it is. And it's , it's a very strange thing.
It's like, yeah, they , they really want to fill the vacancy very quickly and I get that. And then they're willing to kind of lower their standards. But if you don't have lease guarantee, at least that, I mean it's , and the person has like a really low credit score, really low income. It's, I mean it's really just setting yourself up for a future problem. And I think a lot of landlords learn it the hard way.
Unfortunately, even when they do attendance screening report, they still might look at it and make the wrong decision and you know, you have to be objective as well at a certain point where you're not necessarily just, you know, trying to fill it so quickly. I would say, you know, if somebody qualifies for l ease guarantee, then maybe give them a chance with that tool in place. But if they don't qualify even for l ease guarantee, I don't know if that's something I would recommend.
So what do you think is the best, I guess, component for choosing? I'm not going to say the perfect tenant . I've yet, w ell I have one that came really, really close. But what do you think is the component besides using a tool like TenantAlert.com what else do you think is needed to get that good tenant?
I would say not outside of tenant alerts data that we give you. Obviously having a good credit score, no criminal, no eviction. You also really want to do research outside of that to find out what their income is. So there's this misconception that income is somehow related to a person's credit score. It's not. And so fortunately if somebody has really good credit, they don't have the money to afford the apartment, it might be a struggle for them to pay it, even if they have good credit.
So always good to find out if this person has a good amount of income to cover the rent, t o cover all their expenses, to cover all their debt payments on a monthly basis. So I would say ideally you'd want somebody who has a really good cushion on that income to rent ratio. So three to one is usually pretty average. So what most landlords would want is at least three times the income amount.
And then also t oo, I would say verifying employment so that you know that income is going to keep coming. So somebody who has a stable job, who's worked there for a long time, who makes more than enough money and also has a good credit score and a clean background, that would be like 10 out of 10 I mean I would rent to somebody like that in a heartbeat.
Awesome. I agree. I agree. If you can't , and it's hard to find it, I've only been able to verify one landlord that could vouch for that prospect and that prospect kept insisting, call my landlord, call my landlord. They could tell you, I'm like, why do you want us to call your landlord? And I was thinking it was fraud. Like, Oh, it's the cousin. They just want me to talk to a cousin and the cousin how amazingly awesome they are. But ironically the landlord did and he had to sell.
I can't remember why he was selling, but he needed to sale . And he was really trying to help them find another place to stay and he verified everything. I was able to make sure that he owned that property and he really proved that he was, that the landlord, and I was shocked, but he gave the best recommendation, like you've got to use this family. They're the best ever. And they actually ended up being the best for my clients.
So I mean it's kind of rare that that's only one story I can think of when you can verify landlord.
Right? That's where , that's what you want to see. Verifying landlords is a little, it's a little tough. You know , we , we actually offer that as a service too, where we can add it onto your account. We're , we'll call their landlord, we'll call their employer, and we do a little bit of detective work sometimes because like you said, sometimes they give you, you know, the phone number or the information of a friend or a family member and they pretend to be their landlord or their boss.
And so you really have to be careful. And I think you said something important is verifying that that landlord in fact owns that property is one really good step. So that the name matches the name of the owner on the property. You can, you can look that up. It's public record. And then also too , when you call the employer, you know, getting a good reference from them is good too.
But you know, sometimes that involves actually looking it up online and calling the company directly, asking for their HR department, not just calling the cell phone number of maybe the person's quote unquote supervisor. So, you know, it's, it's tricky and paycheck stubs are really easy to fake too .
And you mentioned looking at somebody's bank statement, so that's always an option that you have as well as asking the person for their bank statements in the last, you know , 30, 60 days and showing those direct deposits from their employer and where that's actually a product we're working on right now that should be coming out I think later this year where you can actually have that information.
So you can find out if the person is getting direct deposits from their employer based on their bank account really. And also find out what their total balances in their savings and checking. So that is huge because.
That's a game changer.
Oh yeah. And so we're really trying to automate that so that that is, I mean if you know that that person's making that much money, you can verify it. I mean that's a whole step you don't have to do now.
So you just mentioned that you can verify for landlords was I didn't even know cause you could have been doing a lot of this work for me. They're not even available. So how do you verify like what did , what do you do if we said, okay, we don't have time. We have our nine to five jobs. I don't have time to do these certain tasks that you just said to make sure they're , they're credible to be in our property. How can you help us out?
We call, we call over and over again for multiple days to find out until we get somebody to answer. We ask them a series of about a dozen questions and.
we're calling t he the employer or both?
Both. Either one, either one or both, whatever you'd like. Uh , we have a like a questionnaire that we ask and I think the questions are really good and we provide that report to you when we get an answer. And you know, it's, it's most helpful, especially if you start to grow your business and you start to see, okay now I have maybe a, you know, 30, 40 units and I'm filling maybe 10 vacancies this month or something.
You know, making all those calls with all the applications that come in, it's very tempting to want to skip the step to want to skip calling the landlord or the employer cause you just don't have time. Right. So it's almost, it's really worth it to just pay somebody to do it at that point so that you end up saving your time for other things that are more important for your business. And then you can also rely on the information that we're looking at.
I mean, we do it so often, so we have a whole team dedicated to just that. They're very good at doing it and they know what questions to ask and how to find the right information and it can take some detective work. But ultimately, you know, we get to the bottom of it and I think that's worth doing, especially if you don't have the time to do it yourself. Absolutely. So what is the typical turnaround time for us to get the results back?
Yeah, I mean it really depends. It depends on the employer and on the landlord and how easy they are to get ahold of some, you know, they're really easy to get ahold of the answer, their phones, others, it takes awhile . We email them, we call them, we leave them multiple voicemails. And then if after you know, five business days, we don't get anything back from any of them, we'll let you know. But that in itself can be a red flag. You know, you can't reach an employer for five days.
I mean, they can't get back to you. It seems almost like, I don't know, it's kind of weird. Most most companies can can get back to you within that timeframe. And then sometimes they'll ask for other requirements, like they'll want to see the rental application or something like that. So that can delay things. But for the most part it'll be about, you know, no more than five business days and sometimes sooner if we're able to get ahold of somebody pretty quickly.
Nice. It's like you guys are a virtual assistant.
When you think about like all the different steps, screening a tenant and getting them in, you know, we really try to cover as much as we can and also to making ourselves available for you to talk to you. That's huge too. I mean, if , if you're looking at a report and you don't understand it, you might as well not even have one. Right. So, you know, you can call us, we'll tell you what's on it and we'll give you our opinion if you , if you want it and that's free.
So that's invaluable to a lot of people, especially when they're starting and they don't really know how to look at it. I always encourage people to call and you know we, we answer the phone right away. It's not even like you have to wait or anything.
Yeah, I think that's what I liked because the report was just so easy to understand and read and I'm like, okay that makes sense. I get that. Okay, let me download this, let me say this to my clients. And they were able to just look at it and understand it as well. It wasn't complicated cause I've tried others and it's just like I can't figure this out.
And this was just like I could just explain it and if we ended up denying them I could say based upon the report and I could just go right to each term that I see and explain as to why we had to of course deny them, but it was just so it's easy. It takes a lot of guesswork out of finding that tenant for me and I think it helps my clients as well. Like I've said before because it's easy now.
It's like, Oh, we lost the tenant, put it back on the market candle and bam, I'm going to run back to send an alert. I mean it's very easy.
I think so too. I mean even though we are there for people to call and like we can give them our opinion and all that for the most part, yeah. I mean it is pretty simple to understand and we made that a point when we designed the report. So the thing is is like you have the three major credit bureaus, right? And so with Tenant Alert, you're probably getting TransUnion unless you've requested Experian or Equifax. To be honest, I don't really think one is better than the other.
They kind of all have the same information anyway. But the idea i s is that you get that information from, from these credit bureaus and the company that you work with, they're the ones who are packaging that information for you and displaying it in a way that makes it easy for you to understand.
And so the way that we've taken that information and made it easy for people to read, I think like you said, it just makes it a lot easier than some other companies that maybe don't format that information in a way that is understandable or easy to grasp. So I mean for the most part people love it.
They haven't had an issue with reading the reports for the most part, but there's always those weird ones where like maybe you want a n a ddition, some additional guidance or you just want to talk to us in general about you know, the tenant and maybe you want to talk about their income and their employer and some things that you picked up on and see what we think. I mean we're always there for second opinion too.
Nice. I didn't even know that we didn't take advantage of that before. We will now. Yeah, it's really nice that , I mean, and that is a great point that you said that we can definitely call you because you guys created it and you can interpret it. So why not use the experts? We were just in it to get our money. That's what we're in for . Cause we don't, we're not good at interpreting the way we should be. So that's where you guys come in.
I mean it can't hurt right opinion from a group of people who looks at you know, hundreds of reports every couple of weeks. I don't even work directly in customer service. I'm more on the marketing side and and sales and you know customer service. I mean they are constantly constantly looking at reports and I'm looking at them too and it's that kind of, you know, eye for detail. It's like it comes with years of experience as well. So they are easy to read.
But also if you want extra guidance from people who look at these every single day, it doesn't hurt to call us.
You know, when we first talked about getting together to have this podcast, you mentioned you had something like a special incentive for the listeners today to try TenantAlert.com. Our tenant screening ebook. Basically, i t goes over what we talked about, which is not just, you know, running the report but also, you know, verifying the landlord, verifying the employer red flags to look for on the application questions that you should be asking a tenant during your interview process.
And even looking at people's socials and seeing, just by looking at it, if it's a fake social, which you can do in some cases. And so I think, u m, you know, having that ebook is awesome. Whether you've been doing it for a long time or you're just getting started, there might be some things that you can pick up on and start using day to day. And then you can register a $ 10 for free. So there's absolutely l ike no s et u p costs, there's no fees like that. You really just pay as you go.
And the prices range between 20 and $50 per report. So, y ou k now, whenever you need it, you can come in and use it. And you know, there's no obligation to pay any sort of membership fees or anything like that or sign up fees or you know, so it's really easy to get started. So it's just more like when you need it, go to TenantAlert.com and use that ebook to help you screen tenants a little better.
And I think, I think that's really the call to action here is to educate yourself and then to use a good tool to get good tenants.
Yeah. Yeah . And sign up is extremely easy. Like within minutes you can sign up and then when you meet that prospect, you just get their email address, put it into the system and it sends them the link. And before you know it, you get your results back. And I think that that was the effortless part. You're not paying anything out of your pocket because your prospects are actually paying for their own credit report.
Yeah, absolutely. And then there's also the other option too , which I , I think you and I talked about this, you know , a couple months ago and you didn't know this option was available either, but you can't actually, if this is something that you're doing on a regular basis. So let's say once you start to grow, you start to get bigger and you're thinking, okay, I don't have time to maybe send out an email to the tenant. I , I just want to get the information right now this very second.
If that's the case, if you can't actually get set up as well, where you're entering in the tenant's information and then getting the results right away without having to wait for the tenants to be sent an email or anything like that. And that's something that our clients that are like larger property management companies where they don't want to have to, I guess communicate with tenants so much, but rather just pull the information on demand. You can actually get set up that way too.
So that , that's another option as well for some people.
What will be the requirements to even set it up?
So you basically would need to schedule an inspection of your office. And I mean if you work from home that counts. That's , that's your office and all you need is a paper shredder and a lockable filing cabinet. And I know now you know with coronavirus and whatnot, they're actually not physically going to your house for awhile . They used to before this whole thing. So now they just have like pictures.
So you literally just take a picture of your filing cabinet and send it over to us along with your, you know , signed rental application or lease that you might've used in the past and your driver's license, a voided check and you're good to go. So that's really all you need to get set up. And then there is a small setup fee for that is it's $59 and then that's it. You can just order reports on demand. And again, that's completely optional.
This whole thing, just to be clear is , is not for everybody, but it is an option if you want to order reports that way.
So it's unlimited. It's unlimited reports as well, right?
Yeah. So you can do that for as many reports as you want, which is great. So you know, really it just depends on how you want to operate. One of one of the benefits of using us is that we're pretty flexible to accommodate how your business operates. So if that's how you like to do things you want , you don't want to necessarily send an email to the tenant, we can accommodate that.
Or if you want to, you know, use maybe like an online application, we can create one for you where people can actually fill out the online application on your website and that person gets screened for TenantAlert. So that's another great way if you have a website or even listing. So if you do listings on Craigslist or Zillow, you can contact us and we'll create a link, an application link or for you and you can just send that to, you know, put it on anywhere, any website.
And that person will go in, let's say they see it on Zillow, they click it, they fill it out, they pay for the application and you get notified when somebody applies.
Wait a minute. This is a game changer. So you're saying if I wanted to go ahead and advertise a property that I have just rehabbed and putting out for rent and I'm putting it on Zillow, I can go ahead and post in that link. Apply now. I can put the link with TenantAlert.com and the application comes up.
Absolutely. We can do that for you. I'm like, I wish I had talked to you sooner about this.
You just saved so many steps. Oh my goodness.
Yeah. That's another way we can accommodate. If you're , and you know , nowadays everybody's posting their vacancies online. I mean we're also post them. So I think, you know, if you want to do that, all you need to do is ask for it. So that's the thing is it's not automatically in your account already, but we're working on creating something where it'll already be in there.
Um, but yeah, Kendall , after this call I'd be happy to, you know , create one for you and send you the link and you can use that on all your ads that you , that you put up .
Nice. Nice. That will definitely help out a lot of my clients.
Yes. Yeah, it makes it a lot easier for sure. We are a lot easier.
I, in episode two I interviewed my best friend and she, she builds her own properties and she was sharing how it took her a minute because we were trying to figure out how to get the properties on Zillow and then to go from there to the next step of, of course meeting them in person and I'm coming to see the house and then the background check and all of that. But she was saying like, I showed so many times, so many times and it's like wow, we would have known this step existed.
We could have already had that link on Zillow and they could have already applied to the background check and said, okay, let's have a private appointment and you can see the house. And that way it would have saved so much time, cause she showed it multiple times. It was exhausting. Then, you know, sometimes we have to be honest, when we look at, when we're showing our properties as landlords and we have so many prospects coming in, there's always a chance that they won't come back.
They'll find another property and we can't convert them. Especially if they're really a good potential. We're like, okay, we gotta do right now. We've got to get them to that application, check everything, let's get them because I think this is a good one and we don't want to lose them cause they, even the tenants know they're good. So they get to pick who they want. Sometimes we have to choose, especially if it becomes a tenants market.
So, and it's a lot and we're in an area that we've have a property available and it's a lot of properties on the market for rent. We have to kind of be competitive. So this right here, that is a definitely a game changer with already having the link there because we can go ahead and capture them the moment they fall in love with the house online.
Yeah, absolutely. And then not only that, you know, I've, I have some clients of ours that they might have an open house, so sometimes they'll be like an open house and they'll have the application link already up on an iPad and they'll put up the iPad and they'll say, Oh, you like the place, here's the iPad, go ahead and fill it out. And right then and there they get the background and credit check. That's awesome . Done and paid for everything.
And the application, the authorization, the background and credit check and the payment for the, for the application fee all in one step while they're there at the open house. So I mean there's different ways that you could use the tool, but yeah, I mean it definitely does save a ton of time. And you know, tenants, especially good ones, like you said, they're at an advantage at getting able to pick and if you don't act quickly, you know that they're gone.
They're looking already at the next place that they want to go to, you know? And then to you, you might get some people that are kind of flaky, they come, they look at the house. They waste your time. Yes. They're not even a help people .
Some people, I don't know if it's the hobby or what, and they're just like, want to go look at rentals they can't afford it is it is a big waste of time for, and a lot of tenants, like even if you tell them the qualifications upfront in the ad listing, they'll still try to see if they can maybe meet you and look at the property. They'll promise you they have the best credit score. Then you come to find out, it's like nowhere close to what they said.
And I don't know if they think maybe you're just not going to check or what.
Oh yeah. We always get one of those. But this is a great strategy that you can use. Oh my gosh, there's so many options with this. See , I didn't even know this was available. Wow. Well, yeah, we've given out at least about a good four or five strategies just in this one interview.
we have some good options for you and you know, whatever you need. So, and you know too , if you want to also contact me if you have questions about, you know, other types of services that are related to your rentals. I know a lot of people in the industry too, so we always refer, we have partners. Let's say we have a collection agency we're partnered with. Hopefully that doesn't happen, but you know, if you needed help with that, we know a really great company for it.
So we're a good resource to have basically not just for tenant screening, but for anything related to your rental property. You know, we're, we're here to help. Phone lines are open. So , if you need anything related to your rental property, even if we don't offer it, we probably know somebody who does and who does a good job at it.
Nice. Well, Alexandra I thank you so much for being on the show today. You really gave a lot of information and shine a light on how easy it is to be our own property manager.
Yeah. Thank you for having me. Campbell's is great. I really enjoyed it. Awesome .
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