Outer Banks Housing: How does the screening process work for prospective tenants?
When OBX Housing receives a Notice to Vacate from the current Tenant in your Outer Banks rental home we immediately begin working to find a suitable, qualified new Tenant. As many of you know, OBX Housing keeps an extensive data base of prospect Tenants that we have already pre-screened through our Home Alert program. These prospects have signed up through our Website and requested that OBX Housing notify them when suitable homes come on the market. We first reach out to those on the Home Alert system before we begin our extensive marketing campaign through various local sources as well as through numerous online rental search engines. Some of the search engines that we list your Outer Banks rental home include Zillow Rental Network, Zumper.com, Realtor.com, Apartments.com and Lovely.com just to name a few.
Once we receive calls and/or email inquiries for you home, we have a questionnaire that we require all prospects to fill out to make sure they are pre-qualified before we show them your home. This questionnaire asks things like how many occupants? Are they a family? Do they have pets? Do they smoke? Do they have steady income 12 months of the year? If so, how much is their monthly income? Are they gainfully employed? Can they provide previous Landlord references? Once these questions are answers we then work coordinate with your current Tenant for us to begin showings your Outer Banks rental home with one of our Brokers (Tina or Mona.) Typically we pre-arrange a block of showings with the current Tenant (example from 1pm to 3pm) and schedule showings every 15 minutes. We provide flyers that list the details of the property that includes photos and details of the home. This flyer has also previously been emailed to the prospect. We also provide a sample of the OBX Housing rental application so that they will know what information we will need in order to proceed with processing their rental application.
Once a person decides they want to apply for the home, they must go online and fill out the rental application and pay the fee to process which is $50 per applicant. For this fee, OBX Housing receives a Credit, Criminal and Background check as well as the Credit Score of the prospective Tenant. We then contact their previous Landlord(s) for a Rental Verification and also obtain Employment Verification from their current Employer(s). Once all of this information is obtained we then present all rental applications and details to the Home Owner as they have the ultimate decision in selecting new Tenant.