Covid-19 has devastated many industries, forcing changes to longstanding practices, requiring adaptation to new rules and regulations, and reducing profit margins.  Here in Cleveland, many landlords have been hit particularly hard.  Tenants have lost jobs and their sole source of income leading to missed rental payments.  Vacancies are increasing dramatically in some areas.  At the same time, the legal and regulatory environment has changed, prohibiting landlords in many instances from pursuing evictions and other remedies that would allow them to recoup losses and find new tenants who can cover the mortgage, taxes, insurance and multitude of other expenses associated with their properties.    

What can landlords do to adapt to these challenging circumstances?   While each landlord’s situation will be a little different, even in good times all of us in this business need to be able to fill our vacancies efficiently and effectively.  Now, more than ever, when a vacancy arises we need to have the right processes in place to find and identify the best people to fill our units.

Virtual Tours

Due to stay-at-home orders in some areas and concerns about the risks of Covid-19, many potential tenants are asking us if they can tour our units via FaceTime, Zoom, WhatsApp, Skype and other similar platforms.  Having a pre-recorded virtual tour, done professionally or DIY, that can be sent promptly when such a request is made will separate you from the less prepared and less diligent competition.  Potential tenants should of course also be offered a live video tour so they can ask questions while touring and see specific areas of interest to them within the unit, so Landlords should make sure that whoever is showing their rental has access to the multitude of videocall programs applicants may want to use.  In addition to being, “Covid-friendly,” virtual tours and walkthroughs make it easier to rent not only to locals, but also to out-of-state tenants who are looking to relocate.  

Paperless Applications

Landlords should make it as easy and convenient as possible for tenants to apply for vacant units and to pay their rent.  Particularly in the current environment where many tenants will want the flexibility of staying in their homes to complete every aspect of the lease-up process, from touring to applying to delivering their first month’s rent and security deposit, this means eliminating paper applications and the need for an applicant to go to the bank to obtain a cashier’s check and drop it in a mailbox or hand it to your leasing agent. Companies like TenantMagic can assist in the transition to paperless applications because they email links to each of your applicants that walk them through the application and background checking process all from the comfort of their home.

Screening Tenants

Regulatory and legal changes during the pandemic, such as eviction moratoriums and prohibitions on certain rent collection actions, have made it critically important to thoroughly screen tenants before entering into a lease with someone new.  Leasing to a tenant with poor finances, a bad rental history or other problems becomes even more devastating when the legal processes we could previously rely on to remove such a person are no longer there to support us.  While you have many options when you select a tenant screening company, TenantMagic provides necessary background screening for residential and commercial landlords.  TenantMagic is also completely free for landlords to use and has worked to make it easy for tenants to share their application materials such as paystubs, copies of photo IDs, and other pertinent documents with landlords.  We may get a small bonus for referring landlords to TenantMagic via this link.

While these are unprecedented times and landlords are facing serious challenges to their businesses, there are many steps you can take and processes you can deploy that will help.   Having a solid and reliable lease-up process in place that combines virtual touring of vacancies with an online platform that efficiently walks your potential tenants through the application process is critical.  Work hard and focus on good business practices and you will come out of this with a stronger business than you had before!  

Disclaimer: The above is solely intended for informational purposes and in no way constitutes legal advice or specific recommendations.