Redundant tips
Landlords and agents representing investors, you should know about this for good measure. We read a home blog that has recently given a well intentioned tip of supplying landlords with a list of your rental history. The blogger tells apartment dwellers to walk in to the leasing agent or landlord’s office and hand them a rental history “resume” as a means of “impressing” the landlord.
What we see is the potential for frustration by renters here. This is how we imagine the scene going:
- Renter chooses unit.
- Renter is given an application.
- Renter fills out application but not the rental history because they’ve already turned that in, per a blogger’s instruction.
- Landlord or leasing agent calls them back into the office for an incomplete application.
- Renter says “it’s not incomplete, I already gave you my rental history,” to which the landlord says “I appreciate that, but we require all applications to be completed in full,” to which the renter gets frustrated.
We would amend the tip for renters to avoid redundancies and to take their “rental resume” with them as a means of reference for themselves so they have the information on hand for an application. It won’t impress a landlord, there are no cookies awarded, the application will still have to be completed.
This tip may, however, hold water in states like New York or where renters are not renting with a management company, but it could actually frustrate the renter in having to redundantly complete an app.
