Take the time to tune up your lease. Build in the annual increase with renewal, a month-to-month fee, and other items to avoid the same problem in 2 years from now. I would shop property managers much more than just a couple. A good one should make you more money and easily cover their fee. Look for an active NARPM member. Review their management agreements and where their fees are. IF you go it alone then spend all your initial resources on SCREENING!!! In case you missed that its SCREENING!!!!! Give me your cell number and I'll call you ever day and yell this at you ;-)
Okay, not 100% on what your advice is here SUP /sarcasm.
I rooted around the other RE&Landlording threads and found a recommendation for this
BiggerPockets Tenant Screening blog entry. Is this sufficient in your opinion or do you recommend other screening criteria?
Notes from the bigger pockets article:
1. Set Criteria:
Income >3x rent
Good References
Never Evicted
Clean Background (no felonies, etc)
No co-signers (I added this one - I want 1 person on the hook for rent only)
2. Pre-screen
Advertisements include rent rate, location
Phone call - get them talking ask them to ask you about the property, explain the criteria and that I'll run a credit and background and reference check, ask how many people will be living in the house, any pets?
3. Application
Name address phone # DL#, SS# DoB
References - current and past landlords + contact info
Employer incl contact info, job info incl take home pay (incl 2 most recent pay stubs)
How many evictions filed against them or leases they've broken?
Release of information signature
(consider a few other questions in the blog post linked above)
4. Run credit & background checks using SmartMove from transunion. Applicant pays the fee. If they are denied, I send reason, and name, # and contact info for transunion if that report is the reason for denial.
Whole time: be aware of fair housing laws - deny or accept on basis of criteria and apply criteria to EVERYONE. Never ask applicant if married, have kids, what race, religion, etc.
Okay this summary isn't everything from that blog - but it's a start mainly for future reference.
Any big ommissions I should add?