Hi all,
No new news from Susan today. Guess she's relaxing somewhere right now will update you as I get the emails through. Well since I haven't got any news on her travels to share with you I can get straight to the point of this episode of my landlord help blog which is "Tenant Referencing" or "Tenant Checks" as they are also called.
For those of you that have been following the blog you will know that I have covered the following subjects in my previous entries:
Links to LetSafe added for ease
Rent Guarantee
Legal Cover
Buildings Insurance for Landlords
Contents Insurance for Landlords and Tenants
Now I use LetSafe because after many bad experiences with other providers of buy to let products and services they have proved to be the best. I have checked them out, looked around and spoken to other buy to let individual landlords, landladies and letting agents.
I recommend them personally because I use them and have looked long and hard before settling on them here is a direct link to their home page:
With no further delay we can now get into the subject of tenant referencing. As you now form previous blogs I run two properties. I use a letting agent for one property and I manage the other myself. It has been a great learning experience so far and although my experiences of buy to let providers outside of LetSafe haven't been great I have managed to sail a steady course so far. The trick is get a good provider like LetSafe www.letsafe.net and get a good letting agent who takes the time to explain things clearly and are helpful when answering your questions and concerns.
Tenant Referencing is important for many reasons and this blog would be pages long if I went into every reason why. In a nutshell though there are two main reasons why you should make sure that you have a good level of tenant referencing for anyone moving in to your property under a tenancy agreement (click below for tenancy agreement advice):
Reason 1 why Tenant Referencing is important:
You should know as much as possible about who is moving in. You should know what their financial situation is and look at their track record. For example LetSafe checked 3 years previous employment (did they have a tendency to jump around or were they steady people), Did they have any CCj's, Bankruptcy judgements or any other bad credit 
history, did they leave their previous landlords in a state, was rent unpaid. If the answer is yes to any of these LetSafe return a recommendation based on their findings, and if it is all clear sailing you also get a recommendation based on their tenant referencing. I wouldn't want to let just anyone into my home even more so when those people are supposed to be paying me rent for the privilege month on month. I would want them checked out to make sure they are financially able to pay the rent and also to check that they wont leave mid tenancy or leave me with rent arrears etc.
history, did they leave their previous landlords in a state, was rent unpaid. If the answer is yes to any of these LetSafe return a recommendation based on their findings, and if it is all clear sailing you also get a recommendation based on their tenant referencing. I wouldn't want to let just anyone into my home even more so when those people are supposed to be paying me rent for the privilege month on month. I would want them checked out to make sure they are financially able to pay the rent and also to check that they wont leave mid tenancy or leave me with rent arrears etc.LetSafe's tenant referencing gave me peace of mind and to me that is one of the biggest and best reasons to make sure you use thorough tenant referencing.
Reason number 2 why Tenant Referencing is important:
As I said in my previous blog instalments, the vast majority of rent guarantee and legal expenses cover will only be given if you have taken out tenant referencing. At the end of the day the same principals apply I guess as renting out your property in the first place, it is a risk and as such an insurer will want to assess that risk before allowing insurance to be put in place. I also forgot to mention that in a conversation with the LetSafe help desk that almost all Rent guarantee providers would require copies of all the referencing if a claim needed to be put in. So without it you are unlikely to receive a payment from the insurance.
Massive reasons why anyone getting into buy to let should take out good, in depth tenant referencing. I looked on the web before instructing LetSafe to go ahead and noticed some very cheap online referencing firms but to be honest and frank the level of detail they could give simply wasn't good enough. The letting agent I had appointed for Susan's house were already using LetSafe and they told me they wouldn't use anyone else. After trawling the Internet, I also decided they would be best bet for me. I instructed them after visiting their page that gives a good deal of information about it:
I cant stress enough how important it is for me personally to know that any potential tenant I have that they are referenced fully and quickly. It seems to me that to appoint a company that will not go into the level of detail that LetSafe do is similar to opening your door and letting anyone in to stay.
I hope this has helped. I have put together some links for you all as I don't have a great deal of time today to go into the full detail on this subject, it is enough to say for now that I am certain that as it is so pivotal to renting out your home that it will crop up again.
Bye for now, see you all tomorrow.
Tasha
