There are good and bad tenants, and there are good and bad landlords. If you are the investor and thus the landlord, we will assume that you will act in good faith and practice ethical business practices for your tenants.
But what if you get a bad tenant?
THE most important step of the landlord/tenant relationship is to THOROUGHLY check the background of your rental applicants. If you do not do your due diligence on this critical step then prepare yourself on suffering significant financial losses. If you get a bad tenant then you are at the mercy of California's lengthy eviction process.
Signs of trouble:
- the applicant is reluctant on disclosing the requested information on the application, such as social security number, previous landlord references, etc
- the applicant cannot/refuses to pay for the application fee
- the applicant says that his/her credit score is low, but because they were screwed by a friend or an unfortunate once in a lifetime occurrence is the culprit
- the applicant wants to pay you several months of rent up front in lieu of a rental application/credit check
- your gut tells you something's wrong
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