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Originally Posted by Azure
The problem is not all of these people are what you would call 'deadbeat tenants.' Out of all the customers that owe us money, there are maybe 4 that we know there is chance of getting final payment. Luckily they don't owe more than a couple thousand dollars.
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Yeah then it's basically a time consuming customer management issue where you just work with them to get the $$, I can imagine it's a huge PITA.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Azure
How hard is it to do a credit check? How does this affect the relationship you have with your clients?
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http://www.rentcheckcorp.com/ is what we use, but I don't know if that's limited to landlords only.
As for relationship, we're up front as part of the application process we may do a credit check to establish their reliability for paying rent on time, it doesn't guarentee they'll pay but it sure helps find the total red flags. If they can't pay their cell phone bill and there's 3 different cell carriers they owe money to they're probably not going to be reliable tenants. The only people I've ever had worry about doing a credit check is people I ended up not wanting to rent to.
Your situation is a bit different because it's a short relationship rather than a long term one, but still might be worth while doing in some cases, or at least you might require 90% up front for a customer due to what you see on a credit check.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Azure
The escrow service is an interesting idea.
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The problem I'd see there is usually it's the buyer that decides when the money gets released, which doesn't help you, but maybe there's something similar where if there's a disagreement an arbitrator would make a decision. Maybe that's a business opportunity for the contractor style industry.
I figure if I was great at what I did, I'd have customers pre-pay or prepay except for a small amount to cover deficiencies if they aren't addressed, but depending on the market that could either be no big issue, or basically dry up business entirely, so that's a tough decision.