If you’ve been a landlord in the past 20ish years, or even a renter for that matter, you’re probably more than familiar with the screening process. Credit checks, criminal history reviews and employment references have become industry standard in terms of what you can expect when you’re looking to rent. But what about the more subtle tactics?
Ever notice how all the properties you seem most interested in are being advertised in the same space? Or how a fully detailed listing can include screening requirements that put you out of the running before you even express interest? These observations, or lack thereof, are no coincidence. This is the work of some expert-level passive screening.
What Is Passive Screening?
Just as the name implies, passive screening is a filtering of candidates that requires little to no concerted effort on the part of the landlord. In other words, it’s set up to do the work for you. In conjunction with regular active screening procedures, it’s a great way to funnel your pipeline before applications even come across your desk. Read on to learn more about the key fundamentals of passive screening.
Marketing Magic
Have you ever been watching TV or reading a magazine and come across an advertisement that seems to be speaking directly to you? Spoiler alert: that’s no coincidence! Marketing firms pay top dollar in research to understand as much as they can about their target audience, including what they will be watching, reading, and where in general they will be getting their information. This is where landlords can learn a thing or two.
In order to find that highly desirable tenant, you need to meet them where they are. Think about what characteristics your ideal tenant might possess and then try to imagine where that person’s attention might be. In marketing specifically toward your designated candidate profile, you are not only making a more targeted focus toward them, but also spending considerably less time expending your energies elsewhere.
For example, if you own a property on or adjacent to a college campus, that’s nice and walkable but also lacking in storage or parking, your target renter will not be a mature family. But rather, those attributes in a rental seem tailor made for a student. However, if you cast too wide a net and spend your resources marketing anywhere and everywhere, you could waste a considerable amount of time and money pulling in the wrong kind of candidate. The kind that consistently don’t end up signing on the dotted line. A strategic and well-marketed listing will help you avoid all that, doing all the subtle filtering under the radar and working like magic to pull in prime renters.
Up-Front and Personal
While the active screening process might be considered standard these days, there will still always be some candidates who can’t make the grade. Previous evictions, criminal histories, or even lack of employment are a few examples of things that some tenants may prefer to keep concealed, for fear of losing out on their chance at renting a particular property.
In these cases, candidates will appreciate knowing up front what they can expect from the screening process. If someone is not comfortable with a background check of a certain nature, they can spare both parties the time and effort and look elsewhere for rental options.
And that’s not the only way it pays to TMI. The more detail, good or bad, that you provide about the property itself in the listing, the better. For example, if no off-street parking is an immediate dealbreaker for some renters, but you fail to mention that in your marketing efforts, people will be extra disappointed when they discover the detail on their own. No one wants to waste that kind of time on a space that isn’t right for them, and they don’t have to.
Better business is all about efficiency. And what’s more efficient than establishing processes that work for you, even when you’re not working at all? By honing your marketing tactics and providing as much detail as possible about the space and the application process up front, you are automatically trimming your candidate pool – but in the best way possible. Passive tenant screening techniques ensure that you get only the most qualified candidates in your queue. And just like that, you’ve got options. Without even breaking a sweat!
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