There are many questions that need to be answered before you finally let a family come and live in a property owned by you. Investigate as much as you can beforehand covering your personal property to anyone. Remember that investigating is your right as being a landlord and you can cancel the deal anytime you want.
These precautions are suggested amid increasing criminal activities in the country. Although we cannot completely stop the crime at least let’s do our part. Little steps matter.
Here are the questions that you should definitely ask your tenants before making a deal.
Question # 1
Personal Information
- Religion
- Number of family members
- CNIC/ B-form number of every family member
- Vehicles they own
- Nationality
Answers to these questions will give you an idea of who you are going to give your house to. Collecting this information will help you in knowing better about the people with who are you sharing your residence. But, do not trust everything you hear. Do a background check yourself. Match the provided information with the documents and even contact the relevant authorities for cross-matching the information.
Question # 2
WHY?
- Why do you need to move from your old house?
- Why are you changing your area?
- why are you moving to this house especially?
Asking several questions with WHY would let your tenant-to-be know that you are concerned about selecting the right tenant and also tells them that their tenanting history matters. The tenant should not lie in any of the answers mentioned above. If you find your tenant being suspicious while answering any answer then you should not miss a signal and take an action on the spot.
Question # 3
The question that you don’t ask and regret later
- Complete name. phone number, and emergency contact number.
- do you smoke?
- Who else will be living with you?
- Do you have any pets?
- Are you financially stable?
These questions behold great importance yet they sometimes go unnoticed. We never ask the basic questions yet pay attention to in-depth information about the tenant. Next time a tenant comes to visit, try to pay attention to these questions more than anything unnecessary. Knowing about the pet is important so that you can tell them about any allergy that you or your family member have.
The most important questions from the abovementioned questions are the first and last ones. You should collect several numbers of your tenant so that you can contact anyone in case of an emergency. Knowing if your tenant is financially stable is very important. You will never want a tenant who is planning to stop paying the rental amount as soon as anything goes wrong.
Question # 4
When do you need to move in?
You should ask your new tenant this question and if they reply with “As soon as possible” or “Today”, it's an alarming situation. No one would visit and move to a new house on the same day. It could mean that their old landlord has asked them to move rapidly. It means that they do not have a place to live currently and this can also predict that they are financially unstable.
Question # 5
Give good reasons why we should tenant you?
Ask your tenants about the reason they think are good enough to tenant them. sign a contract with them on conditions accepted by both parties and keep the copies with you. Knowing the reasons from tenants can give you a better idea of how are they going to behave during the tenanting period.
