We hope to move into an apartment complex by the end of the summer. Before we can get approved, though, they have to visit my home.
I’m a pretty clean gal – not Martha Stewart but I’m not a slob. No vermin living in the walls, you can see all the floors, I Febreze once a week, etc. The house has some problems, some of which are out of our hands and some that just came about in the 5 years we’ve lived here.
Is there anything special I can do to my house to show this woman that I would be the perfect tenant? Do landlords look for anything in particular when deciding to let someone sign a lease? Money’s not an issue; we’ll be well able to pay the rent and everything if we’re accepted. I’m just wondering what I can do to increase our chances …
That sounds bizarre and fishy to me. I rented for 10 years and never once did anyone come over to the previous place I’d lived to “interview” me, or “inspect” or whatever they’re going to do. What if you were a future tenant who was moving from out of state or out of the country? Would they fly overseas to check out your old place? This strikes me as such a violation of privacy, I would never rent from anyone who insisted on such a practice.
Now, I adopted a rescue dog and the rescue organization wanted to come over to the house to make sure I’d make a good dog mom (and to make sure I wasn’t a puppy mill operator). Turns out, they gave me the dog without the inspection, because I didn’t feel like waiting around and insisted they hand him over. (And I invited them to pop by any time they wanted, but they never did.)
I’ve had landlords check my references, which meant they called my current and previous landlords to make sure I paid the rent on time. I had one landlord ask for my mother’s phone number, so they could collect from her if I didn’t pay the rent. I refused to give it to them (I was 28 at the time, not a college student and just couldn’t figure out why they wanted my mom’s number.), but they wouldn’t let me move in until they had an “alternate number for my permanent home address.” Since they wouldn’t believe that I was a responsible grown-up who was trying to move into my permanent home, I made up a bogus number and moved in.
If you’re actually going to allow these people into your personal life to nose around, you might as well get written references from previous landlords and pull your credit report while you’re at it. Besides my mom’s number, the only thing any landlord has been interested in about me is my ability to pay the rent on time, and whether or not I have pets and how many. Get a letter from your boss stating your salary, since clearly you don’t care about this invasion of your privacy and these people have no respect for your privacy.
Ditto on bizarre, fishy, and never heard of this before. Let me throw in “creepy”. I’ve been renting for 25 years. Among all the places I’ve rented or even looked at, no one has ever made this a requirement before signing a leaseI wouldn’t rent from these people… is it by any chance a lone male who told you this? Your curent landlord can be a reference without a personal visit from the new one.
At the absolute minimum you should knock on a few doors at the new place to find out if it is a standard practice.
Are you in the United States?
This does not bode well for your privacy in the new place either.
Yes, they do this to everyone that moves in there. Seems like they can because sometimes the state subsidizes the rent there or something.
The landlord is actually some corporation in Ohio. I think the office manager, a woman, does the home visits.
No, I don’t mind a home visit. The rent is very reasonable, almost all utiliites are paid and the complex is safe, plus the apartments are very nice. I can’t afford to live where I do now for another winter, the utilities will eat us alive. I realize some people would have a big problem with a home visit. I’m not crazy about the idea, but I’m not in a position to pitch a fit about it at this time.
But since you’re actually looking for an answer to your OP, I would say that probably all they want to know is that you are clean and quiet and reliable. I can’t imagaine what else they would be looking for. So clean up the place, but I don’t think you need to be obsessive about it. Don’t have any pets, if you aren’t allowed to in the new place, hide all the porn and bondage items, and don’t get into a screaming match with anyone. In short, show that in the course of your normal, everyday life, you are sane, clean and would make a good neighbor and tenant. I don’t think you need to bake her a cake or anything.
It would probably not hurt you if you could somehow find some way to personalize the meeting, so perhaps you should leave out an interesting book, or pictures of your trip to Antartica or something that she might notice and ask about, thus leading to real conversation. Stand out a little from the other applicants (in a good way) so that she will remember exactly who you are.
I would think that they would be interested in your maintenance of appliances (clean fridge, stove, bathroom, etc.) and in any indications that you have pets or habits (e.g., smoking, juggling chainsaws) that might do damage to their property over the long haul. I’m not sure what you could do if the place needs a paint job or whatever.
When we moved into our present place, the landlady went around with us and we made a list together of any minor pre-existing damage or wear-and-tear. Do you have anything like that?
This actually happened to an old girl friend of mine many many years ago. It was in Santa Cruz, CA and the landlady wanted to make sure my girl friend wasn’t a front for some of those “dirty, filthy, hippies.” The girl friend was a school teacher and passed the inspection with flying colors. Of course, she kept me, her sister, and most of our friends well out of the picture.
The home inspection definately sounds fishy (only person to ever do that was my dog’s breeder), but all the apartment complexes I’ve lived in required income verification (usually a few paycheck stubs).
On a TV show they recommended having the smell of freshly cooked bread or baking in the house, if you have a open home for selling it. You could do this for your inspection too?
This happened to me. My current landlords wanted to see our place before they’d approve us to rent from them. I thought it was fishy, but the company was reputable, I hit it off with the person who interviewed me, we were desperate to get out of the hellpit we were living in, and the apartment we wanted was a dream. Big! Airy! Good location! Affordable!
They called it an inspection, but when the property manager arrived at our hellpit, he barely came into the apartment. He glanced around our living room and left. It took about two minutes. He never looked at the kitchen appliences; he never looked at the bathroom. I think he was just checking for obvious filth, extra roommates, piles of junk, bad stenches, etc. We got the apartment, we still live there, and the landlords are great.
Use this as a litmus test. If the inspector just glances around the place, the company’s cool. If she goes room to room, opens closets, and rubs her finger on tabletops to check for dust, do not rent from them.
If you want the place to look so clean you could perform surgery in it, hire a cleaning service. I don’t know what the going rate is in the OP’s area, but here in Springfield I hired a company that charged $15 per man-hour. That meant that for two employees to work two hours each equals 4 man-hours equals $60. Not bad.
When I get my mobile home ready to sell next summer I’m going to pay them to go over every last inch of this place with a microscope. It’ll cost me hundreds of dollars, but what the hay.