One effective alternative to handling all of the tenant selection tasks yourself is to use a tenant screening service. These services offer several advantages that will benefit you as a landlord and a real estate investor.

Using a tenant screening service can save you time. Provide that you have the proper information on your application which includes the property authorizations, all you do is supply the service with the prospective tenant’s application that includes all the pertinent personal information, and they will go to work collecting information about the applicant’s credit report, rental history, employment, criminal record, and other relevant items. You won’t have to spend time making phone calls to previous landlords or ordering credit reports.

Another concern is with the increase in identity theft, credit reports are harder to come by. At SSPM, we had to have an audit so that we could see the actual credit report. While the tenant screening service is compiling data, you can be planning your next lucrative real estate investment.

A tenant screening service can save you money. Because these services purchase data in bulk, they can often obtain information more cheaply than an individual who only orders a few reports per month. Using this economy of scale, a tenant screening service can pass these savings on to you, providing you with prospective tenant profiles at a lower cost. In the Atlanta area, the cost ranges between $35 – $60.

Finally, you can obtain consistent, accurate data through a tenant screening service. Working alone, it can be difficult to obtain information that is of a consistent quality. Because tenant screening companies employ professionals who are experts at gathering data, they can often give you better, more accurate results to help you select good tenants.

One thing that we have noticed however, is there is a great deal of difference between an on-line screening service and those services that actually call to verify the data. In the past couple of weeks, we did a comparison between a new on-line service that a lot of other property managers used and our current screening service that we know makes the calls and double checks the data.  We found that the data from our current service was much more accurate and detailed than that of the on-line variety. While it costs more, the cost is passed along to the tenant and provides us with much better data for us to make a decision.

No matter what you decide to do in regards to screening, I encourage you to be consistent with all of your applicants. Consistency is the key.

First, develop a written work plan with your contractor. The work plan should state, in detail, the work that is to be done, the timeframe for completion, and the price that is to be paid for the work. This helps ensure that you and your contractor know exactly what you expect. It’s also a valuable document to have in case the contractor does not complete the work correctly.

Second, pay only for progress. Some contractors will ask for some or all of the fees up front. It’s important get clarity of what you are paying for if you agree to an up-front fee, because it will be difficult to get this money back if the contractor does not complete the work to your satisfaction. Often, you can negotiate a series of smaller payments as portions of the work are completed – this benefits both you and the contractor, because you are more likely to see progress, and the contractor can recoup expenses as the work is being done. We will pay for the materials directly and then do progress payments for the labor.

Finally, make sure that any changes are made in writing. If your contractor needs to extend a deadline, substitute building materials or fixtures, or make any other changes, it’s not enough to rely on a verbal agreement. Your contractor must be willing to commit to all changes in writing.

Other items to consider is making sure that the contractor has the proper credentials as well as insurance – liability and worker compensation. When working with contractors that don’t have the proper credentials and insurance, you put yourself and your home and assets at risk.

Here is a property that we helped an investor purchase. It obviously needed a lot of work, but we will keep you up to date on the progress.

For more information about purchasing real estate investments in Atlanta – you can go to www.TheREiTeam.com.

Anne

www.SolidSourcePM.com

Look at your life from several different areas -

• Financial
• Career
• Family
• Spiritual
• Physical / Health
• Community Outreach
• Personal Development

A well rounded life includes all of these aspects so you should look at them all and determine what changes you would like to make in each category. I recommend that you don’t try to tackle more than 1-2 goals per category or you could get overwhelmed.

Goals should be S.M.A.R.T. – Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, & Time Specific.

For example, let’s talk about financial goals. Maybe you want to acquire long term passive income. The best way to do this is through the power of rental real estate. So one of your goals may be to purchase 2 houses a year for 10 years. That’s a SMART goal. Now what makes a goal successful is not just writing the goal down – but putting together a written action plan once you have formulated your goal.

In our example – how are you going to go about acquiring those houses? You need to put together the action plan to make that happen. Something like – January – Meet with my mortgage lender and determine if I can finance the properties. Interview and hire a team of professionals – Real Estate Agent, Property Manager, Loan Officer, Real Estate Attorney, Accountant, etc. Then once you have your team – prepare for the business. Yes real estate investing is a business. Plan for asset protection, etc.

Once you have everything ready to go – your action plan should include the number of houses you plan to see each week and the number of offers you need to submit to get to your goal.

Each week you should evaluate your action plan. Don’t just keep your goals in a drawer. Look at them in the morning and at night. Evaluate your progress every week. This will help you get and stay focused!

Happy 2009! We hope it is your best ever!