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And what makes a good tenant? Someone who loves your property as if it were their own, who has the means and the desire to pay rent on time and who doesn’t mind taking care of a few problems himself.

You don’t need tenants who see your property as just a convenient stopover. Transience can kill a marginal investment as the costs of vacancies soon outweigh the income of the rented units.

You don’t need someone who doesn’t care what their home or office looks like, such as someone who let the carpet go to pot, let the plants die, watch as water ruins the drywall and cracks the foundation without a word to you. You will not have continual access to your units and will need to rely on tenants to alert you to small problems that could become catastrophes. While you don’t want someone calling you every hour, you don’t want someone who will let the big things slide either.

Iit is therefore in your best interest to find tenants who can (and will) take care of the average nuisances themselves. Find tenants who will try a plunger before a plumber, replace a fuse before calling an electrician. Handy tenants can be worth their weight in reduced rent.

Therefore, take your time to conduct an extensive investigation on the behavior of your applicant to establish their true status with regards to maintenance of a rented property. Furthermore, you need to state the extent of repair expected of the tenants and reduce everything to writing.