Every Landlords Guide to Finding Great Tenants

Product Reviews

(5 stars) - A Landlord's Trusty Reference
If you are petrified of problem tenants or if you think you can rent to anyone who seems likable, you either need to get out of the business or get educated. EVERY LANDLORD'S GUIDE TO FINDING GREAT TENANTS will give you the confidence and the caution you need. I have been renting 3 houses for a few years and have had good luck but have been taking risks that I had not been aware of. Written by a lawyer, it is heavy on risk reduction. But it is also very prescriptive in telling you how to market properties all the way to giving you each form discussed in the book on an included CD.

The chapters on "Complying With Discrimination Laws" and "Checking Applicants' Criminal Backgrounds" were a real wake up call for me. Did you know that you cannot reject an applicant only because they have a past conviction for drug use? Did you know that it may be more risky to do a criminal background check than to not?

Marketing a house can be time consuming. I especially liked the information on telephone screening in a way that minimizes the time spent with people who do not qualify. The author goes to pains to suggest ways of doing this without being rude and without taking legal risks.

I plan to keep this book for reference. It is well organized with a great table of contents and index. Some would say that a lot of information is repeated but that is a good feature for a reference book. I think the author wanted to be sure that a person only reading one chapter does not miss something. When information is repeated that is treated in more detail in another chapter, the reference is provided. Frankly, I loved the book.

(5 stars) - I'm not a landlord, but a tenant
I figured I would get this book to see what could help in the future for renting a house. I liked the few things about pets. Getting a letter from a previous landlord and the animal's vet are great ideas to show my pet is well behaved and what its demeanor is like. I also learned about some things I think tenants should know about, like fees and credit and background checks, and what the landlord can and can't do. I don't know if I'll have any use for the CD-ROM with all the forms.

(4 stars) - Great legal reference for new landlords
Every Landlord's Guide to Finding Great Tenants is extremely helpful in understanding how to avoid legal pitfalls. It also gives guidance, in great detail, on the tenant search process and includes checklists and forms for landlords and property managers to use when filling vacancies. The book contains valuable information on how to avoid discrimination cases and includes state laws on deposit amounts, credit checks and background checks.

If you are buying this book mainly for the CD, you should know the CD is difficult to use as the forms are not formatted as a Word document and thus the printed forms have inappropriate page breaks, which require manipulation to remedy unprofessional looking documents. If you want to use the printed forms they are available in PDF format but cannot be customized. Also this product contains all the forms you need when filling a rental vacancy with the exception of the actual lease. It would be enhanced if a sample rental agreement or lease was included.

(5 stars) - Great resource, especially for the beginning landlord
I just read the 2nd Edition of "Every Landlord's Guide to Finding Great Tenants" by Janet Portman, the author of "Every Landlord's Legal Guide." This book is a great resource for the new landlord who will do everything him or herself.

The book contains chapters on the following topics:

One: Choosing Good Tenants Makes Good Business Sense
Two: Complying With Discrimination Laws
Three: How to Deal with Current Tenants - Before You Look for New Ones
Four: How to Advertise Effectively
Five: How Should You Show Your Rental?
Six: Preparing Your Rental Application and Screening Materials
Seven: Fielding Initial Questions and Phone Screening
Eight: Prepare Your Rental for an Open House or Showing
Nine: Face to Face: Showing the Rental and negotiating with Prospective Tenants
Ten: Evaluating Rental Applications
Eleven: Checking Applicants' Credit Reports
Twelve: Checking Landlord, Employer, and Personal References
Thirteen: checking Applicants' Criminal Backgrounds
Fourteen: How to Choose and Work With a Tenant-Screening Agency
Fifteen: Choosing Your New Tenant
Sixteen: How to Reject - What to Say, What to Write

Again, this book is good for the landlords who choose to do most of the work themselves while owing a few rentals. It is also very good for the novice or beginning landlord. If you are just getting started, this book and "Every Landlord's Legal Guide" can be very useful.

Some of the information may seem to basic for some, or just common sense. Well, when you are just starting a business, and being a landlord is a business, there are many things to take care of, and it is nice to have even the simple stuff outlined in a text so you don't overlook it. This is especially true for those that are trying to be landlords on the side.

The book with index runs 465 pages and is easy to read. Nolo really does a good job of providing legal information in an easy format for everyone to understand. Portman is the author of several Nolo books, and this is the second one of hers that I've read and I like the information she provides. There are ample side-bars, sample documents, highlighted points, and graphs. It is laid out well and reader friendly. There is also a CD-ROM included with the book that contains forms and checklists as well as audio files that have sample dialogs to conduct interviews and such.

This book contains a lot of useful information. If you are in business, you need to have the information to succeed. This book would go well on any landlord's shelf. It would be part of a collection of books and resources to assist with a property owning business and how to be a landlord. If you are a landlord, especially a beginning landlord, I'd suggest getting this book and use Portman's advice on Finding Great Tenants.

Reviewed by Alain Burrese, J.D., author of Hard-Won Wisdom From the School of Hard Knocks and the dvds: Hapkido Hoshinsul, Streetfighting Essentials, Hapkido Cane, the Lock On Joint Locking Essentials series and articles including a regular column on negotiation for The Montana Lawyer. Alain Also wrote a series of articles called Lessons From The Apprentice.

(5 stars) - great resource
Even with the inital flip-through of this book I was coming across things that gave that sudden light-bulb-on moment, as in wow, what a great idea. We are fairly new to the landlord business and just have a single unit that we are leasing out, so while this book is directed almost more towards multi-unit dwellings and multiple listings, it certainly does not exclude those leasing on a smaller scale. I really appreciate the legal charts, for example the one on deposit return timelines, that are broken up by state and list the law for easier reference. The examples of forms and letters are a great help and will be key in being better organized when it comes time to find a tenant again. I also found it helpful that it deals not just with finding new tenants but also dealing with the one leaving. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone with property to lease, and even to people who are looking to rent, for an easy-to-read, very thorough look at the rental process.

Popular Searches in Books