Tenant Referencing

Once you’ve worked out how to attract tenants to your Marbella rental property, you’ll want to understand how to carry out the necessary checks to ensure a stress free occupancy.

Most of us take people on face value, however everything is not always what it seems. Of course, there are many excellent and credible people out there just waiting to occupy your property. But how can you accurately determine if they are or not?

Following through with a thorough tenant referencing process is absolutely essential. This however can cost money, and it may be surprising to learn that many landlords or property owners simply don’t bother. This strategy is a ticking timebomb, if any landlords reading this have been lucky up to now consider yourselves in a privileged position. It is certainly false economy to not do your due diligence, and with people losing their jobs on a daily basis it can only get worse.

Let’s be clear, tenant referencing is not a 100% rock solid guarantee that you won’t get stung. But what it does do is carry out a series of checks and verifications that give you some confidence that someone living in your home is who they say they are. Once everybody has signed agreements and you have a tenant occupying your property, Spanish law makes it very difficult for you to evict them in the event of an unresolvable problem. Having said this, it is better to make sure that you have done everything possible in the first instance to make sure your tenant has their feet firmly planted in moral ground.

If you don’t decide to go with a professional tenant referencing company, you can always compile the forms yourself. Each prospective tenant should fill in these forms, and you should take time to carefully evaluate them. There are plenty of resources on the Internet that can give you sound guidance on what sort of questions you should be asking, and of course the responses.

Even positive tenant references don’t always protect you…

Before going to all this trouble, one of the main things you need to establish is that they can afford the rent? And in the event of a problem there is a contingency. Some landlords are asking for a lot of money upfront however, this can put many tenants off and you may end up losing out because of it. It is difficult in the early stages to determine with any level of certainty, your tenant’s financial position.

Unfortunately, a tenant referencing checks can’t help you here. However by using one, you will have an idea of any prospective tenant’s past history and if you should so wish the criteria could inform contact of their previous landlord.

If you are stuck for time, the other option is to employ a tenant referencing agency. For a small fee they will do the legwork, and leave you to evaluate the responses. You should note before undertaking these checks with the third-party, that you are satisfied with the quality of the questions and the depth of investigation they employ.

In the event that you are considering a long-term rental on your Marbella property, your circumstances will differ from the traditional kind of tenant referencing questions. This is because a lot of individuals that rental properties in Marbella are from overseas, and this means they may have only settled in the country recently. It can be almost impossible to establish the credibility of such a tenant. In these cases and depending on your circumstances, you may need to insist on a guarantor.

This may seem a long way to go for many people, and insisting on a guarantor may end up frustrating any would-be tenant. It could be said, that if a guarantor is absolutely necessary your gut instinct should suggest that you put your energy into finding a tenant with more satisfactory references.