This new form will enable you to collect all needed information from prospective tenants enabling you to easily do your due diligence before picking the right tenant.

The Residential Tenancy Application form enables you to collect the following information:

• Applicant information such as name, SIN, drivers no, DOB & phone.
• Current Address information such as address, length of stay, reason for moving, landlords name and phone number.
• Two Previous Address sections containing the same fields as current address. When doing reference checks often the previous landlord is better to verify than the current since unfortunately some landlords lie to get rid of a bad tenant.
• Current & Previous Employer information such as address, type (Full/Part time), length of employment, position, manager, phone and income.
• Personal Reference information such as name, phone, relationship and address.
• A separate section asking if the tenant smokes, has pets or has insurance.

This form has legal information that the tenant signs to allowing you to run your reference and credit checks.

In the bottom of the form we’ve included a detailed checklist when calling references enabling you to quickly check all important points such as payment history, NSF payments, late payments, noise, proper move out notice and so forth.

Just as the other Forms & Contracts you will be able to print out this form to a PDF file which you can print out and give to your prospective tenants or attach it to an email.

Pricing
We are offering all landlords 50% off this form for 5 days (Ending June 12, 2009). As with all our other Forms & Contracts we offer different pricing options depending on your needs:

Single Use
Normal price is $7.99. For the next 5 days this form will only cost $3.99. This option allows you to print out one version only. You can read more or buy it here.

Multi Use – 1 Month
Normal price is $15.99. For the next 5 days this form will only cost $7.99. This option allows you to print out as many versions as you wish for the next 30 days. You can read more or buy it here.

Multi Use – 1 Year
Normal price is $29.99. For the next 5 days this form will only cost $14.99. This option allows you to print out as many versions as you wish for the entire year. You can read more or buy it here.

Having a good, well described and detailed rental listing will save you a ton of time. The more information you can put in your listing the more information the tenant will have upfront. This will save you time in not having to answer the same questions over and over, but also in the amount of wasted showings.

What should you have in the listing?

A good description and headline

Always have a good and detailed description with an eye-catching headline. The headline is what the tenant sees first!

The place you advertise should have detailed rental listings in which you can select close to everything you would imagine. You should be able to select things like rent, size, smoking allowed, what’s included in the rent and anything else you might need. If you cannot choose this in your current advertising medium consider looking elsewhere. Online rental listings are typically the way to go since they offer far more detailed rental listings than other mediums.

Pictures

Always add pictures. If you can’t add pictures to your listing then you should look elsewhere. The age old proverb: “A picture is worth a thousand words” is always important to remember.

Statistical data

A few websites offer statistical data on their listings. This will typically be a graph that will show you the amount of clicks/views your listings has gotten. This is great for testing your rent level and your general listings. Unfortunately very few sites offer this statistical data. Rentmore.ca offers it through our Featured Rental Listings.

Questions in the listing

A recommended practise is to put 4-5 questions in your rental listing. Put in the listing that answering these questions is required. You’ll use these questions as an initial screening.

Suggested questions:

1. Current employment, with position and salary.
2. Previous landlord references, and how long the tenant stayed there.
3. How long the tenant is planning on staying in the apartment.
4. Anything else that might be useful.

1 & 2 are by far the most important ones, but 2 & 3 can also provide you with knowledgeable answers.

Some tenants will have issues in replying to these questions, especially their salary requirement. The reason for this requirement is twofold:

1. You as a landlord need to ensure that the tenant can pay the rent…no matter what some say, IT IS your right to know this!
2. It will be an indicator of their character. If someone complains, and doesn’t want to give you this information you’re almost guaranteed that they will complain, and cause other problems when they become tenants. An important note regarding this is that everyone is entitled to a fair chance of a vacancy so you cannot deny them a showing.

This is not legal advice. Always ensure that you follow applicable Tenancy and Bylaw Regulations.

Being Organized

Being organized is very important as a property manager. It’s important keeping all tenant information and notes regarding the tenant. With Rentmore.ca’s Tenant Management module you have access to all this information no matter where you are! You can be on vacation and still view or modify the information.

Track Previous, Current or Prospective Tenants

You can track all three different tenant types in the system. You can see: name, birthday, move-in date, apartment, contact information (Phone, Cell, Work, Email, Fax and so forth), employer, previous landlord, personal reference and notes.

Never Loose Your Notes

The notes field can contain all notes regarding the tenant such as repairs done, late payments and so forth.

Import The Tenant Into Outlook

You can even import your tenant into your Outlook or another similar program. All it takes is a single click.

It Works With All The Other Parts Of The System

It works with all the other parts of the system. For example if you use our Rent Management and/or our Forms & Contract Management you can just select the apartment and tenant and all the information will be automatically entered by the system. Doing rent or printing out a contract will take only a minute or two!

It’s free

It’s completely free to use so there’s no reason not to try it out

From now on all available vacancies will be posted on Twitter. It’s completely free to use this service. Twitter will be updated every second hour.

You can go here to find our apartments for rent on Twitter

The most common scam against landlords is sending too much money. What ever their excuse they end up sending too much money, often via Western Union, and then ask you to send back the remaining amount. Don’t fall for this. If anyone tries to send you money via Western Union it’s a good chance that it’s a scammer. In most cases it will be wise to ignore this person.

Common Sense Rules To Protect You From Scammers

• Use a system that will hide your email address. Rentmore.ca does one better, where we also block known scammers and certain countries that are known as high risk scam countries. It’s absolutely free to use this system.

• Only deal with local tenants. Meet the person you are renting to.

• Do reference checks! Even if you are not worried about scammers, reference checks is a key component in finding a good tenant.

My name is Michael Balle Hansen and I’ve created this blog to help landlords and property managers to run a more efficient business.

I started Rentmore.ca in 2004 when I realized there was no place for do-it-yourself landlords and property managers. Rentmore.ca is one of the leading providers of free rental listings and Online Property Management Solutions. This blog is a more personal extension of Rentmore.ca.

I’m very proficient in IT and business and those skills enable me a unique perspective in an historically ‘old business’.

I’m hoping this to become a place for people to come and learn new things, but also to give back by commenting. I highly encourage feedback and constructive criticism and for that reason I’ll leave the comments open. The only comments that will be removed will be spam or anything of that nature.