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When it comes to filling a vacancy in your rental property, patience and careful review are VERY important.  Create a non-discriminatory evaluation criteria for the potential residents of your property and follow it for each applicant.  The first thing to do is to have the applicant complete and sign an application.  From the application determine if they can afford to pay the rent given their income and debt ratio evaluation criteria.  Next confirm all the information from the application with the applicant’s employers and former landlords.  Be sure to ask open ended questions of the landlords so you can get a feel for what kind of resident they might be.  Then ALWAYS run a background AND credit check, to confirm the information you have been told verbally and on the application.  These are very important steps for a long term, happy landlord – resident relationship.  Take the time, you will be glad you did.

What other criteria would you include in the evaluation of a resident?  Please comment.