If you rent junk you will get junk as tenants - A guide to getting a good tenant.

I learned this lesson the hard way as a landlord. I have rented all kinds of properties over the past 18 years and I want to tell you that a bad rental equals bad tenants. It is as simple as that. Some people say that a bad area equals bad tenants but I have seen good tenants in bad areas. I have also seen bad tenants in good areas. So it made me question, what is it that brings bad tenants to my properties. Sure there are exceptions to any rule but I found the following to be the case most of the time.

The reason that I learned this lesson is because I used to have a investment partner. I used to buy rental properties with this guy. Actually I bought houses to flip but some how that turned into a rental property but that is another story. The problem was that he had a philosophy that did not make for a good landlord tenant relationship. His philosophy was one that said that any house whether good or bad could get the roughly the same rent. In most cases that is true but the one thing that he missed was the fact that a bad house had a high turnover rate. Later I was to find out that this high turnover rate did indeed have a high cost. Every time a tenant would move out I would have to incur a great deal of repairs and costs to get the property back up to rental condition. I used to think that I was doing a good job in the rental property business. It is true that we were able to rent our properties pretty steady but there were a lot of problems and costs. I thought that every tenant was a bad tenant and that was just the way it was. What I found was that every tenant was not a bad tenant. In fact there were tenants that were actually good tenants.

What I found after hardship and a high turn over rate was that the good tenants would not even bother to look at a property if it was not up to there standards. It is true that you may not get more money per month for a well fixed up place but you most certainly will get a longer term tenant. I know that a longer term tenant will result in a greater profit for the landlord. You want your property to be the best in the neighborhood or town that you are renting in, that way you can get the best tenants. The best tenants may not stay the longest but they will take care of your properties. And that alone can amount to a big profit for you as a property investor.

After getting rid of my investment partner I talked to other investors and I decided that I would change my ways in real estate investing. I decided that I would present a well maintained house to rent that was completely repaired and in great condition. What I found was that I was able to get a longer term tenant that actually respected the place they lived in. This decision has saved me a lot of money in repairs over the years. My tenants are longer term and they are slowly paying off the properties that they are living in without the heartache and trouble that I used to have.