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| Choosing Good Tenants Makes Good Business Sense | |
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| What's the law got to do with it? | |
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| Is this book for you? | |
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| Ten ways to keep your rental business profitable | |
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| How to use the Landlord's Forms Library | |
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| Why good record keeping is so important-and how to do it | |
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| Complying With Discrimination Laws | |
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| Fair housing complaints are numerous and costly | |
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| Legal discrimination: Valid reasons for rejecting applicants | |
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| Rental properties exempt from antidiscrimination laws | |
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| Types of illegal discrimination | |
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| Occupancy standards: How many tenants are too many? | |
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| Managers and discrimination | |
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| How to Deal With Current Tenants-Before You Look for New Ones | |
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| Send departing tenants a move-out letter | |
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| Do a pre-move-out inspection of the rental | |
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| Inform tenants of your plans to advertise and show the rental | |
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| Ask departing tenants to complete an exit questionnaire | |
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| How to work with tenants who are not leaving voluntarily | |
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| What happens when you can't deliver the rental on time? | |
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| How to Advertise Effectively | |
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| Identify your market | |
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| Create a Marketing Worksheet | |
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| Use word-of-mouth | |
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| Set up a tenant referral program | |
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| Post "For Rent" signs | |
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| Advertise in the newspapers | |
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| Use an online rental service | |
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| Post flyers on neighborhood bulletin boards and online | |
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| Make your own website | |
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| Take advantage of free listings on craigslist.org | |
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| List with local employers | |
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| Use a real estate office to advertise for and screen tenants | |
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| How Should You Show Your Rental? | |
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| Individual property tours | |
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| Private open houses | |
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| Public open houses | |
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| Preparing Your Rental Application and Screening Materials | |
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| Your rental policies | |
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| Your rental application | |
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| Consent to contact references and perform credit check | |
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| Credit check payment | |
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| Receipt for credit check fee | |
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| Consent to criminal and background check | |
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| Legal status in the United States | |
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| Lease or rental agreement | |
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| Fielding Initial Questions and Phone Screening | |
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| Make it easy to reach you | |
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| Prepare a Rental Property Fact Sheet | |
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| Prepare a Rental Property Comparison Chart | |
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| Prepare a Tenant Information Sheet | |
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| How to prescreen over the phone or in person | |
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| Carefully document your conclusions | |
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| Dealing with on-the-fence callers | |
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| Schedule a site visit | |
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| Should you negotiate on the first call or conversation? | |
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| Prepare Your Rental for an Open House or Showing | |
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| Prepare the rental unit for an attractive showing | |
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| Prepare the rental unit for a safe showing | |
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| Prepare the rental unit for a secure showing | |
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| How to plan for and do repairs and refurbishing | |
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| Face to Face: Showing the Rental and Negotiating With Prospective Tenants | |
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| How to hold an open house | |
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| How to conduct an individual showing | |
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| Talk with your visitors and answer questions | |
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| Field questions thoughtfully | |
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| Sell your property, but don't puff | |
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| How to negotiate with prospective tenants | |
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| Discussions with applicants with a disability | |
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| Identify prospective tenants | |
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| What's the next step for your visitors? | |
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| Conduct a wrap-up | |
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| Evaluating Rental Applications | |
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| Log in every application | |
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| Confirm receipt of credit check fee and consent form | |
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| How to review Rental Applications | |
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| Summing up the answers | |
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| Evaluating the application answers | |
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| Rank your applications | |
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| Decide how many applications will advance to credit checks and reference checks | |
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| Checking Applicants' Credit Reports | |
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| How to get a credit report | |
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| What's in a credit report? | |
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| The limits of credit reports | |
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| How to evaluate an applicant's credit report | |
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| Rerank your applications | |
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| Handle credit reports, criminal background reports, and tenant-screening reports carefully | |
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| Checking Landlord, Employer, and Personal References | |
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| Contact past and current landlords | |
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| Contact current employer | |
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| Contact personal references | |
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| Reranking and rejecting applicants after talking with references | |
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| Checking Applicants' Criminal Backgrounds | |
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| Your qualified legal right to reject tenants with criminal backgrounds | |
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| How to avoid renting to people with dangerous criminal backgrounds | |
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| The basics of criminal background checks | |
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| The risks of running a criminal background check | |
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| The risks of not running a criminal background check | |
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| How to decide whether to do a criminal background check | |
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| Inform prospective tenants of your policy and get consent | |
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| How to do a Megan's Law search on your own | |
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| How to get a criminal background report | |
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| How to reject following a Megan's Law or criminal background check | |
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| How to Choose and Work With a Tenant-Screening Agency | |
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| How useful are tenant-screening services? | |
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| Obtain written consent from applicants | |
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| How to find a tenant-screening service (and how much they cost) | |
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| How to evaluate services provided by tenant-screening firms | |
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| How to use the screening report | |
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| Accepting and rejecting applicants based on screening reports | |
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| Choosing Your New Tenant | |
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| What to do when you have no qualified applicants | |
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| How to choose among qualified applicants | |
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| How to communicate an acceptance | |
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| Conditional acceptances and adverse action letters | |
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| How to deal with cosigners | |
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| Holding deposits | |
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| Signing the lease or rental agreement | |
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| How to Reject-What to Say, What to Write | |
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| Ten tips on how to reject | |
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| Adverse action letters | |
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| Rejections: How to say them, how to write them | |
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| Communicate postapplication rejections by mail or email | |
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| Appendix: Using Forms | |
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| Editing RTFs | |
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| List of Forms | |
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| Index | |