Jurisdictions across the United States have halted or severely restricted evictions.. Only now, as I write this in late May 2020 are some states like Texas beginning to reopen the courts. How long will other jurisdictions remain closed? Will new laws be passed to make evictions, especially no fault evictions, more difficult? What if they decide to shut everything down again? What if, what if?
One thing we do know for sure, things will never be the same as they were before. We landlords can likely rest assured that courts will make the eviction process more difficult, that local governments will pass laws to restrict the types of evictions that can be done or institute new hurdles to do so. Some jurisdictions are even setting up systems (with tax dollars) to help tenants fight evictions.
The covid pandemic and the government response of closing the courts has emphasized the importance of one vital aspect of landlording, tenant screening. Tenant screening, especially now without the hammer of the courts, is perhaps the most important thing a landlord can do. It is more important that finding properties, repairing them, or even acquiring funding. Having a deadbeat tenant, especially one you cannot remove by the eviction process, will ruin you and your business.
With the courts closed tenant screening simply has become much more important. As a landlord, you just cannot let potential deadbeat tenants into your property. You have to learn and hone the skills to spot potential problems before they become your problem. I can tell you after over 15 years in this business, almost every tenant problem I have had, from evictions down to the complainers, has been because a red flag was ignored or an issue overlooked during the screening process. Yes, every problem tenant ultimately reflected back to me. In other words, I have had to learn the hard way no to ignore the signs or my screening criteria.
During this pandemic, several of our tenants have had problems. How could they not? Large sections of the economy have after all been shut off and their jobs have evaporated. Of course some people are going to have problems meeting their obligations when they cannot generate an income. But everyone has worked with us so far. Why? One, because we worked hard at screening and bringing in decent people. Second, we worked with them when they hit a problem.
Over the years and after screening hundred of tenants, we have learned to recognize the subtle signs of deeper problems such as a lack of interest, a sense of urgency or answers that seem just a bit too rehearsed. We have found that people are good at lying and you have to be better at detecting the lies. Deep down most of us want to trust and believe what others say. But you simply cannot. The reality of the situation is that as a landlord, you cannot accept anything you are told at face value. In fact, I guess I would go so far to say that we have to assume that we are being lied to until we find out that we are not.
Recognizing red flags and conducting thorough tenant screening are skills that can be learned. To help you, I wrote about 21 major red flags that every landlord should look for when screening tenants which you can get for free by clicking here.
Will you still have to learn some things that hard way like I did? Yes, most likely. But by educating yourself now and by starting to hold folks to a higher standard you can keep many of the headaches out and avoid the problems of closed eviction courts altogether.
