Choosing the perfect tenant: essential criteria to secure your rental
You have posted your rental ad, received calls, and may have even organized your first visits. It’s real… Your rental investment is progressing!
Then another big question arises: among the candidates, how do you choose the right tenant? We agree, we are undeniably looking to assess the seriousness and the solvency of the candidate: how can we ensure that? Moreover, are these objective criteria sufficient?
To find out, follow the guide.
Make the most of the visits 🤝
Knowing how to handle a rental application 📁
Here we go: the famous rental file and its list of supporting documents makes its appearance in the process! And it’s only natural. Dare to request all guarantees without overwhelming the candidates with a ton of documents to provide.
Here's what we consider balanced:
Identity document;
Employment contract or student card or Kbis extract and copy of the last financial statement depending on whether the person is an employee, student, or business owner;
3 most recent payslips if relevant;
Most recent tax notice if relevant;
3 most recent rent receipts;
In the case of guarantors: the same documents above related to them + a guarantee act;
Possibly evidence of benefits received: housing assistance, family allowances.
With this, you have plenty to evaluate the solvency of your potential tenants:
By yourself, by calculating the solvency threshold;
By an insurance organization that will also analyze these documents, if you choose to additionally subscribe to unpaid rent insurance.
Calculate the solvency threshold 🧮
Traditionally, this is set below 33% of the tenant's income. Beyond this canonical rate of 33% of housing-related expenses, it is considered that there is a risk of non-payment.
In reality, it is a bit more complex than that 🤔. A high level of income is good, but it does not necessarily guarantee dealing with a good payer. Hence the next section.
To go further... ask for references ✅
Solvable: yes, but honestly, what about it?
To be sure, you can contact the former owner to ensure that the prospective tenant has no debts to them or ongoing disputes. Another interesting reference might be the employer: mainly to ensure the job information stated is accurate - one can never be too cautious - but also to obtain a little extra layer of reliability.
The question of feeling ✨
Anyway, the chemistry must work. And for that, we have no ready-made recipe to share with you. Some owners operate on first impressions, others on the presentation of the file (reactivity, organization, meticulousness) or on the communication following the visit (accessibility, politeness, friendliness)... Each person has their own perceptions and feelings!
We simply encourage you to always take the time to distinguish between personal feeling and discriminatory behaviors.
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