Episode 42: As a Tenant, How to UP Your Chances to Get An IMPOSSIBLE Rental
Summary
Today's tenant-perspective episode focuses on HOW to get ahead in places that have waitlists as long as your arm, and never call you back. What can you DO to up your chances at getting one of these rentals? Today we discuss jumping into the landlord's head in an impossible rental market, how to make their job of qualify YOU easier with a ready-to-go tenant package, and confirming that as a tenant (and a human), how you do anything is how you do EVERYTHING.
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Full Episode Transcription
Welcome to my life as a landlord where we untangle all things housing and educate the curious. If you're
looking for some entertainment with some honest, awkward conversations, you've come to the right
show. I'm your host, Dr. Jennifer Salisbury. This is my life as a landlord. Welcome to it.
Hello. Hello. I am Dr. Jen. Welcome to my life as a landlord. I am so happy that you are here with me today. And
today is episode number 42. Last week was Wendy Myers. Thanks for Wendy coming out. Lessons from
the landlady. Super excited about her book. That is super fun. So if you miss that, you definitely want to
listen to it. And we're even better go to the YouTube channel. My wife is a landlord and and watch the
interview with Wendy. It was pretty cool. So very cool lady. But this week is all about tenant
perspective. What are your chances? How do you get that impossible rental? How do you at least up your
chances Mean you could do lots of stuff and sometimes it's just word of mouth, but you just never know.
But I can make some strategic plans for you, and if you can help yourself get into an impossible rental,
why wouldn't you? So here at my life as a landlord, we talk about all things housing and every aspect
of rentals, and today is a tenant minded episode. So my friend needed a rental in Victoria BC Now I'm
finding impossible. Rentals are nearly everywhere but in. School locations like university locations, they
tend to be even worse because the university is drawing more and more people in. From all over the
world, not just locally, but from all over the world. And it makes it even crazier trying to find a place that
you can live, especially if the dorms are full. You get it. So she needed this rental in Victoria BC and she
just said it's impossible to get a rental. Finally she did and said, Wish you to call me because I could tell
you. And she goes, You should put that on a podcast. So here it is. Here's my my strategy to get a
impossible rental. Okay. So as a tenant, here's the trick. As a tenant, if you can make the qualifying work
of your future landlord easier. 1s Then you're going to make it easier for the landlord. To get you into this
rental. Okay, Now we're going to. This entire episode is all about this, so just bear with me. So if you
make it easy for the landlord to say yes, then you're going to up your chances of getting this rental. So
there's three points. Those of you who've been with the channel a while, you guys know how I operate.
Three points call to action. So here's your three points. First thing, we're going to jump into the landlord
perspective of this impossible rental location. We're going to look at it through the landlords eyes
because that will help. The second thing we're going to do is we're going to talk about the package that
you as the potential tenant. You need to do the grunt work. Okay. And then three, just a reminder that
how you do anything is how you do everything and anything involving your landlord, your future
landlord, their watching and anything that they can disqualify you, they likely will. All right, so here we
go. Landlord perspective. Okay, so let's jump into a crazy rental location like Victoria BC. But it's it's
really anywhere. I mean, New York City, San Francisco. L mean, could just keep going. I'm in an
impossible rental area where we are both on Maui and in Canada. I hate when I have a vacancy as a
landlord. 1s It is hard for me to know I have a vacancy coming up because you're about to open the
floodgates of applicants and potential tenants and people telling you their story and. Basically, as a
landlord, I want to make sure that the unit has rented. Right? It's rented properly. You've got respectful
tenants that the assets not going to get destroyed. But as a tenant looking for an impossible rental, you've
got to jump into the landlord's shoes for a second and understand that landlord is stressed, that landlord is
very stressed. They don't want to have that vacancy advertised for any amount of time that they can avoid
it. In fact, as soon as they put the ads out, the floodgates are open. As soon as they can get it rented,
they're going to take those ads down. Okay. So just want you to understand that these landlords are
stressed. They don't like having vacancies. I hate having vacancies. And a lot of the time, if I can pull
from my existing waitlist, I will that that unit will not go public. But we'll see. We'll see how it works.
Sometimes it does. Okay. So when when these landlords post the ad that the unit is available 1s as a
potential tenant, if you respond to the ad saying, is this available? The answer is yes. The answer is yes.
Okay. If it's not available, the landlord would pull the ad, And if you're just going to waste one
communication with that landlord to ask if it's available when it is available, you've just wasted
communication with the landlord, Remember, landlord is stressed. The landlord. There's two stressful
times in the landlord's life getting the right tenant in and getting the wrong tenant out. So you're trying to
figure out a way that you can tell the landlord that you're the right tenant to get in and you can't waste
your communication time with them. So if you are. Conversing with them through Craigslist or Facebook
Marketplace or wherever, or, you know, just an application. You walk in their office, whatever. If there is
an ad available, it's available. Okay? If it's up, it's available. You only have so many interactions with this
future landlord. Don't waste them. Okay? So you know you're going to be interacting with them
hopefully as much as asking about application income, source, income level evictions, authorized credit
check, pet information, all of the stuff that you already know. This is what this landlord is going to do.
To qualify you. So make it easy. Okay. Item two, prep your package. Do the groundwork for this
landlord. I've had people do this for me twice, and I rented to them both times because it was so
impressive. Okay, so here's what you do. Prep your package, first of all. I'm going to tell you all the
attachments. You're going to create a giant email. Giant email with a summary letter on top. That's what
you're going to do. You're basically going to create a tenant resume for your future landlord. You're
going to do all the grunt work for them. You're going to show them. Last two pay stubs or bank
statements now. Make sure you're smart about this. If your social insurance number, your Social Security
number is showing on that, like it out. Okay. But make sure on your income statement or your pay stubs
or whatever it is that you're doing, make sure that you send the whole thing, including the logo of the
bank or your employer or whatever. Because if it looks like it's faked, they might just throw it out. Okay,
so. That's the first thing is income pay stubs. If you're moving, if you're moving to that area from
somewhere else, then and you have a job offer, you have job offer letter, include the letter again with the
logo and the phone number for the future employer that is in town, which is why you're moving to town.
Include the letter. Okay, let's talk about previous landlord references. Now, this is a very big deal and I'm
going to do another podcast on how to properly do this, how to properly give landlord references,
because almost no one does this, almost no one does. Previous landlord references. And what it is, is if
you can get a reference letter from your landlord, your departing landlord, where you're leaving your
landlord. Then you don't. You're making again, you're doing the groundwork for this future landlord. But
if you've got this and this reference letter from your landlord could be very simple saying they they
rented a two bedroom apartment for the last two years. There was no issues with paying rent on time.
There was no issues with behavior. They got their security deposit back, all of this stuff. We're going to
talk more about how to check references and how to provide references in a future podcast. But again,
we're trying to create this package for tenants to provide. To this impossible rental. If you can run a
criminal record, check or check on yourself. So there's no criminal record showing now. It depends on
your location, on where you are, state, territory or province. If you can show that on yourself and don't
mean get the fingerprints one and go go down to the police station. That's not what I mean. You want like
court records, like if you can potentially get something online and take a screenshot or buy a document,
something like that, to just show you have no criminal records. Okay. The next thing credit. Almost
every landlord is going to require a credit report. Credit check. So if you can run a credit report with the
score yourself included in your package, again, do the work for the landlord and it will be easier for them
to say yes. If you have no credit. Let's say you're either an immigrant to the United States or Canada. You
you are new here. You have no credit, but you have someone who's willing to co-sign for you, whether
it's a parent, a guardian, a sponsor, your new employer, whatever it might be. If you have someone who's
going to help you, then guess what? The co-signer also has to provide this package. I know it's a lot of
work, but if you want that impossible rental, you'll get it. Well, you'll up your chances of getting it. Okay,
let's talk about ID if you've got your ID, whether it's a government issued picture, either a driver's license,
a state identification card or a passport, you can block some of the information out if you want. And I've
had people do that in the initial and the initial package. They'll black blank, some of it out, whatever. At
some point, if they've done that, then I'll say, Look, I need your full picture ID, whatever. And then then
one of the other things that you could do is if you have pets, let's say you have a doggie, say, okay, here's
the picture of the doggy, the name of that letter, not just, Hey, this, my doggy is fixed and on flea
medication and the breed of the dog, the age of the dog. It is a vet letter to confirm this. And this is not
that hard to get now. Yeah, you do have to go into the vet, but it's not that hard. But if you were to do
this. Uh, to create this pets and all the information on yourself. Additionally, you want to make sure
that if there's anything else that you have about your character, your credit, your housing history, maybe
you took a ready to rent class and you have a certificate from that ready to rent class. Obviously you want
to put it in there. Maybe you got a letter of recommendation or a letter of reference on some of your
schooling from one of your professors. Maybe all of that counts. All of that counts. Okay. You would
want to put that into your record, your your package that you've got here. And the whole idea here is that
you're saying, hey, to your landlord, I've done the work for you. You want me as your tenant. And so
when you've created this, these attachments to your income, your pay stub, your payments or sorry, your
statements, your job offer, previously landlord reference letter or some kind of testimonial from your
landlord, your previous landlord. No criminal record. Credit report with score or cosigner. You
know, you're seeing what we're doing, right? We're putting this whole package together, and it's a lot of
work. Yeah, it is. But what happens is you put a summary letter on top of that. Dear future landlord, I've
done your work for you. Here is everything you need. Now you can say in everything. Say my credit
score is this my credit report is this or I forgot I had a cell phone, so my credit has dipped. You know,
forgot. Had an outstanding bill. My credit is debt, but have no criminal history. Here's the deal on my
pets. Here's that you know, it just explains the whole thing. Simple one pager and then the landlord can
look even behind even if they don't read everything in the back of your package, because they may not.
They could say, wow, this person really did the work. Let's at least get them in the door. That will
probably get you a showing if you can get the package to the future landlord. Okay, so the whole idea
here is to make a minimal effort on the new landlord. And yes, it is going to take time. No doubt.
Absolutely no doubt. But hopefully, hopefully you only have to do this once. And if you have to update
it, it will be much easier to update it. Right? Let's say you rent this for one year and for whatever reason
your job transfers you or whatever. You do the same thing again, but you only have to update the
attachments. Right? You see how this all works. But again, the whole idea here is, is you're making it
easy on the landlord. You're telling the landlord that you are a good tenant because how you do anything
is how you do everything. Now, you might be saying, Jen, Hey, wait a minute. What about scams? What
if this landlord is a scam? What if they think I'm a scam? So the biggest thing for scams is you don't
send any money. Sometimes they go, okay, we need an application fee, we need this, we need that. Okay.
If they want an application fee, then you've got to research who it is. If you've got a real estate agency or
someone phone them, call them up and just say, Look, is this legitimate? I'm just making sure this isn't a
scam. They will confirm or deny. Don't don't call the number that that they have. Google the number
outside of it, because it may be different. Right. Some of the scams I'm sure you're aware some of the
scams might say, hey, call us such and such a number. Well, that may be part of the scam, but if you
Google it outside of the ad, this real estate agency, outside of the ad and check it out, then it's very likely
not a scam. It's very, very likely a legit thing. You also might want to research the location if it's a person
or a property management company, you can make sure it's legit. But let's also look at this. There's really
not too many identifiers on what you're saying. Even though you sent them a job offer, you sent them a
bunch of things. There's you're not you're Social Security is not in there. You can block out your
birthday on your ID if you want, Right? There's a bunch of stuff that you can do to make sure that it is a
legit future landlord. Right. But don't send them any money. That's the thing is that until you're ready and
you're confirmed that it's really, you know, who they are, who they say they are, then you can move
forward and it would be proper, a proper process to do that. So. Okay. We talked about the landlord
perspective. We talked about putting together your tenant package. Let's talk about the third thing. How
you do anything is how you do everything. And what do I mean by that? So. The landlord is watching
you. The landlord is watching your speed of response. They're watching how respectful you are If you're
using words like, yeah, sure. Okay. That's very I'm going to say immature. Okay. You want to be a bit
more respectful? Remember, this landlord is your your future housing provider and a lender. A landlord
is a lender of the home. And you promised to pay the rent. So you want to make sure that you're being as
respectful as possible. Right. But when your package is ready to go and that's the trick is if you know
you're going to need a rental, you want your package ready to go into one one summary sheet on top, and
then you've got all your documents behind one PDF. There's plenty of places online, free PDF, and they
combine them together. You've got one package as an attachment. But here's the trick. At some point,
they're still going to want you to do their application. And that's fine. You should you should do their
application, but you also want to make sure that your package goes in there as well. Okay. Let's see how.
What did I forget here? Um, can you see the unit? Right. You've done all this work. Not one of the
conversations that we've had so far includes a showing. So at this point, if you've either given them the
package or you've completed an application, can you see the unit? Right. You're not going to be signing
anything up until you see the unit. 1s When you show up to the showing as a potential tenant and you've
got this this first impression already with your package, hopefully it's stellar. You want to show up early,
you want to show up in clean clothes, clean car, you want to show up in board shorts and a, you know,
wife beater, tank top and flip flops. You want to be again, how you do anything is how you do
everything. You want to be respectful. You want to be mindful because how you are taking care of your
car is how you be taking care of their unit. You drive up in a dirty car, ratty jeans, dirty t shirt with food
stains, and the car is full of fast food 1s containers. Guess what? That's exactly how the unit's going to
look. It's exactly how the unit's going to look. So again, how you do anything is how you do everything
you want to try to up your chances as much as possible to get this impossible rental. And the biggest
thing you do is you've got to prep your package in advance. Most people don't want to do it. It's a lot of
work. I've received them and it's very impressive. It's very impressive. If you make it easy for the
landlord to say yes, they very likely will say yes. Okay. So yeah, that package takes a while. But that's
that's the point. If you do the work for them, that makes their stress level go down, that makes their ads
go down faster. All right. In summary, this is this is the the trick to try to up your chances to get this
impossible rental. We talked about the landlord perspective, prepping your package and then how you do
anything is how you do everything, especially leading up to the actual qualification and acceptance into
this unit. All right, here's your call to action. Get your tenants out there. Do the work. You've got to do
the work. If you just kind of really kind of half assed, this package, which I've seen them on Facebook
where people kind of put, you know, 4 or 5 pictures of their family or their pets from their camera roll on
Facebook marketplace, let's say AD and they go, Hi, we're just new to town. We're looking for this, we're
looking for that. But that does not help me as a landlord. That doesn't help me at all as a landlord. It's sort
of the five minute version of what we're talking about. This package that I'm talking about is going to
take you about an hour to put together. But if you get your impossible rental, is it worth it? So this is my
call to action again, Do the work. Oh, my goodness. As mentioned, I've received two of these tenant
packages in 15 years. And did I rent to them? Yes. Am I in an impossible rental world? Yes. And do I get
stressed when I have a vacancy? Yes. I want to get the right people in as quickly as possible and get
those ads down to stop the floodgates. As a tenant. Don't just put five pictures in five sentences on
Facebook and expect to get what you're looking for, especially in a very, very, very tight rental market.
They're not even going to respond most of the time. Do the landlord work for them? Okay. Hopefully
that sets you up for success. Future tenants that you can get your impossible rental. You've got to actually
do the work. So you've done it. Good luck to you as a landlord. When a tenant approaches me and has
done this work in advance, shows me how much they really want this rental. All right. Let me know your
comments and questions in both YouTube comments or at my life of the landlord. You can also email me
learn at my life as a landlord, or you can join the discussion on Facebook or LinkedIn in the landlord
tenant groups. Comments and questions Create the next podcasts. So just keep that in mind as we move
forward. Thank you so much for joining me this week. Join me next week as we tackle another Salisbury
adventure and as you guys may know, our Maui rentals and our business is based on Maui. We're going
to talk about Maui. We're going to talk about the wildflowers on Maui. And this is episode next week is
episode 43, the State of the Maui Fires. Thanks so much for joining me today. I hope you learned
something. Bye for now.
Thank you for joining us this week. To view the complete show notes
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Thank you again for joining me, Dr. Jennifer Salisbury in this episode of My Life as a Landlord. I'll see you next time.