No Property Manager? 5 Steps to Rent out your Property

by Dave Peniuk

Money is tight, and you've got to rent out your vacant basement unit. You live above the unit and you need the rent money to make the mortgage payment. What do you do? Rent it out to the only person who is willing to move in right away. And you allow yourself to justify why that person won't let you speak to their current landlord or why the collection agency is after them.

What could go wrong? This lovely tenant could be unstable and pull a knife on her roommate. Yes - it happened to us at 3am on a Wednesday night about 4 years ago. We had to call the police and have them separate the two tenants. The victim moved out the next morning and we were left with the knife wielding tenant who then stopped paying rent but refused to move out. It took us three months to evict her. We had to live above her the whole time. Once we FINALLY got her family to come to town and move her out (we were still a few weeks away from legally being able to throw out her stuff and change the locks), we had to send a collection agency after her for the rent money. We never received a dime.

As you can imagine we've taken great pains to find good tenants ever since. Here's the overall process:

• Step 1: Prepare the unit for showing
• Step 2: Get your paperwork in order
• Step 3: Research the market rents and place your ad
• Step 4: Show your space
• Step 5: Choose your new tenant.

Step 1: Prepare the unit for showing

The better it looks the more likely you'll find a good tenant for the space. Make it easy for someone to visualize themselves living happily in that space.

Some suggestions to prepare the unit:

• Fill any holes and put a fresh coat of paint over the walls.
• Check all of the doors, locks, plug ins, appliances and light bulbs to ensure they are in working order.
• While you are doing this, create a checklist to use when the tenant moves in or out. Include all of the rooms, doors, windows, drapes/blinds/shutters, plugs and light switches, shelving, appliances etc.). When your tenant moves in you both need to sign off on this sheet - it's required by law in B.C. If you're not sure how to start this sheet check out docstoc for examples.
• Air the unit out before showing it - open up the doors and windows to let fresh clean air in.

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