marketing skills, and if you don’t have (and use) the right resources to find a good tenant for your house, that’s one of the biggest mistakes you can make when renting out your home. Many people mistakenly think they can just throw a sign in the yard and somehow, a magically perfect tenant will just show up. Here’s the real deal: It takes time, effort, energy, marketing, and proper screening to find a great tenant for your house. Some people do “luck out,” and some people know a friend of a friend, but in most cases, you won’t find that great tenant without that effort.
NOT SCREENING TENANTS PROPERLY
Another common mistake people make when renting out their home is not screening potential tenants properly. Some get lucky, but many others end up with a “bad apple” occupying their home for much longer than they’d like. Later on in this book, I’ll discuss this critical issue of properly and thoroughly screening all potential tenants, but for now, let me emphasize that this is probably the most important thing you can do in the renting-out process. Screen your tenant prospects! It can’t be said enough. Do everything you can to keep those “bad apples” out of your precious home. If you don’t, and you end up with “that” tenant, you have no one to blame but yourself. It’s your responsibility to find a decent tenant for your home. Far too many people avoid this step and end up in awful situations that you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy.
NOT HAVING A GOOD LEASE
Another area where people often make mistakes is not having a good lease in place. Just any lease isn’t enough; you need a rock- solid lease! The lease needs to work for the specific intricacies of your area, and for the laws of where you live. Lease laws
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