renting to borderline tenants

[primaus]

I am currently looking for tenants for my IP.

Planning permits are being drawn up at present so looking to lease only 6-12month max.

I have had a young couple come past expressing genuine interest. They have a young child. Both of them are currently not working and say they can afford the asking price of $385 a week. Would centrelink rent assistance etc make this doable for this couple?

Also, is it possible to draw up a rental agreement in vic to have "rent gurantors" e.g. his parents liable if they fail to pay on time?

The couple seems quite genuine on their intentions. They are happy to pay 4 week bond and forthnight in advance. I have asked them to go home and think about if they can afford it.

IP has been vacant for approx 3 weeks hence I am keen to finalise new agreement as cashflow will be tight in the near future.

Thoughts?

 

[Ed Barton]

I am currently looking for tenants for my IP.

Planning permits are being drawn up at present so looking to lease only 6-12month max.

I have had a young couple come past expressing genuine interest. They have a young child. Both of them are currently not working and say they can afford the asking price of $385 a week. Would centrelink rent assistance etc make this doable for this couple?

Also, is it possible to draw up a rental agreement in vic to have "rent gurantors" e.g. his parents liable if they fail to pay on time?

The couple seems quite genuine on their intentions. They are happy to pay 4 week bond and forthnight in advance. I have asked them to go home and think about if they can afford it.

IP has been vacant for approx 3 weeks hence I am keen to finalise new agreement as cashflow will be tight in the near future.

Thoughts?

is your concern that they can't pay the rent on their 1000pw income or where they get their income from?

do they have a rental history.

 

[INVSTOR]

I have never rented to borderline people. If I didn't feel 100% confident I would wait another week.

 

[kathryn d]

I have never rented to borderline people. If I didn't feel 100% confident I would wait another week.

We rent to them all the time. They pay on time as much as the others.
You still have their bond to fall back on.
Having their parents cosign is a great idea..we do that too, on occassion.

 

[Jamie M]

I am currently looking for tenants for my IP.

Planning permits are being drawn up at present so looking to lease only 6-12month max.

I have had a young couple come past expressing genuine interest. They have a young child. Both of them are currently not working and say they can afford the asking price of $385 a week. Would centrelink rent assistance etc make this doable for this couple?

Also, is it possible to draw up a rental agreement in vic to have "rent gurantors" e.g. his parents liable if they fail to pay on time?

The couple seems quite genuine on their intentions. They are happy to pay 4 week bond and forthnight in advance. I have asked them to go home and think about if they can afford it.

IP has been vacant for approx 3 weeks hence I am keen to finalise new agreement as cashflow will be tight in the near future.

Thoughts?

Have they rented before? Have they got a reference from a real estate agency? In my experience, it's those that have something in writing from a previous PM and can have a PM vouch for them end up being decent tenants.

A few ways to mitigate the risks if you do choose them - landlords insurance, direct payments via centrelink and the guarantor agreement (can't see why that wouldn't be possible).

Ultimately, if in doubt, hold off until a better quality tenant applies.

 

[RumpledElf]

direct payments via centrelink

Centrepay. Love it. You get the info under the 'business' section of the Centrelink website, fax them the forms, get your Centrepay ID within a few days, get the tenants to fill in their part of the forms and then you can get the rent delivered straight to you for the princely sum of 99c a pop. You have two tenants so double that if they pay half each.

Not sure how easy this is with an agent but as a private landlord it is utterly brilliant.

 

[alplant]

We used Centrepay for a while with a previous agent and weren't all that impressed. It started off ok, just 99 cents a week til the tenants started paying it out of three different pensions, so triple that, then they started paying half a week here and half a week there, so it got up to four to six lots of 99 cents a week, not so wonderful then. And when they decided they didn't want to pay for a couple of weeks for whatever reason they didn't seem to have any trouble stopping the payments. Of course whenever they got a little reminder they then blamed Centrepay, swore it was coming out of their pension but Centrelink weren't passing it on. The agent was useless to follow up so we tried ourselves but Centrelink wouldn't tell us anything because the contract was between the tenants, Centrelink and the agents, we as landlords weren't entitled to any information at all, privacy issues.

It might work better for self management or even with a better agent, but we changed agents and the new one didn't accept Centrepay payments because they reckoned they had similar problems to what we had experienced. Not sure about the current agent, who took over the business, but I seem to recall they won't use it either.

 

[joanmc]

8/9 of ours are below borderline! insurance, insurance, insurance! Some are good some are bad. references are the better indicator than where the income comes from.

 

[MellyBelly]

We're looking to move to a larger property (4 bed+) soon. Neither my husband nor I are in paid employment. Ideally I would not like to disclose all my finances to an agent/landlord. How much money do you reckon I should show in my account to satisfy the agent/owner that we can easily fund the rent? 2-3 years rent/price of the house (lol, yes that's fine too). We've got cracking references from our current agent as well as the owner. Thanks