Are Bank Statement required?

[davidw89]

Hi,

We currently self-manage out property and lease them out on a room by room basis. We've been doing so for a long time now. We have never ran into any issues until a few months ago when a tenant couldn't financially afford to pay (lost job, best friend died, or something along that line). She ended up staying an extra 4 weeks unpaid (bond only covers 2 weeks). We would like to avoid these kind of situation occurring in the future.

So lately, we have been requiring prospective tenants to provide us with 3 months worth of recent bank statement. One party refused, claiming that he has too much money (scared of me jacking up rent), that there was private information and that blah blah. I don't think I'm being unfair as real estate agent essentially do the same thing.

Just wondering how you would screen your prospective tenant.

Thanks,
David

 

[Jamie M]

I don't think it's unreasonable to request 3 months of statements showing rent being paid on time to previous landlord (that's assuming the previous LL was self managing - otherwise you could just get that info from the PM).

They can black out non rent related items or filter an online transaction summary to show only the rent payments over a 3 month period coupled with the front page of an old original (paper or PDF) statement so you can marry up the account numbers to prove ownership of the account.

Cheers

Jamie

 

[sharpcq]

You could ask for receipts or tenancy ledger from current/previous Landlord/Property Manager.

I don't see the issue but can understand why some people wouldn't be comfortable with this.

 

[Peter_Tersteeg]

Tenants ledger from a previous property manager (don't even bother calling a private manager, bad tenants just give a friends number).

2-3 payslips are another way of demonstrating a persons ability to pay rent.