Please share with me some of your telephone pre-screening questions? (pre-screening before you set an appointment to show the property.)

The number one question for me and the first question I ask is: "What area are you looking to live in?"

I get tons and tons of calls from people looking for places not even remotely close to me.

Why are you leaving your present living quarters?

How will you be paying for the apartment. Most important question. Better way to ask than "Where do you work" since many of them don't work.

How many in your family will be living in the unit?

Will you be getting a pet? This is better than asking how many they have since they will lie.

Don't ask about children specifically if they don't mention any in the other question. Try to call them back on a Saturday morning when children would be present and you can listen on the phone as to whether they are screaming or polite.

What is your full name?

What breed/size/type of animals do you own?

When are you wanting to move?

What city do you live in?

What is your monthly income?

What other last names have you had.

How long would you want to live in my unit

Plus the above questions.

"WHEN do you need the property for?"

- I estimate that 20 percent of the callers need a different move in date than the date that is clearly listed in the ad. Too often I have gone thru the details of the property only to learn the caller needs to move before the property is available.

Is your dog friendly? As opposed to some question making them deny they have one.

I too like the is your dog friendly. Clearly a yes (or a no) answers the bigger question do you have a pet. Probably more truthfully than asking do you have a pet.

How many people would be living there?

When are you able to move?

What are you using for a source of income?

Do you smoke?

Do you have pets? If so, what kind?

Why are you moving?

Is there anything that will come up on your credit report that you wish to explain? (I've had excellent tenants who had bankruptcies - but they were compelling and verifiable reasons). Otherwise, that question often generates interesting background information.

Most important - listen. Most of the time, they will tell you exactly what you need to know...IF you listen!

My stand line of question

For txt.

Thank you for ur interest in XXXX SW Mayo. When u looking to move? How many ppl living w/you? Pets? Monthly household income?

For email and phone calls

When are you looking to move?

Why are you looking for a new place?

How many people will be living with you?

What type of pets do you have?

What is the household monthly income and where do you work?

William,

Most LLs have diarrhea of the mouth and rattle on and on about the home, assuming the caller is a prime prospect without gettting real info from the caller.

Callers drone on and on with their life stories wasting the LLs and their own time.

Caller ls lie. Flat out. They don't want to appear broke. "Is this in your price range?" usually gets a yes no matter what.

We don't answer the phone. Callers get a voice msg with basic info and are pointed to our website for more info and a free application. We do not usually talk to them until we have a queation about their app or to tell them they aree approved.

iF we happen to talk, these are our questions. No info or discussion until we have these answered:

1. WHEN do you need a place? Eliminayes half right there.

2. Are you WORKING? Eliminates another half.

3. How much RENT do you pay right now? More eliminated.

4. Tell me about your animals. We LOVE pets but I'm amazed how many people have 5 dogs. Also brings out service animal comments.

People appreciate anfocused call that takes them to an answer.

Life is short. Use your time wisely.

I ask "How much is your rent right now?" which tells me what they can afford.

MANY of our applicants do not know their gross pay, only the net so the LL who is calculating a % the LL might be incorrectly eliminating a potential resident.

I LOVE the "is your dog friendly"!! to root out dog owners in advance!

I've automated the lead-to-lease process including screening. Inbound phone calls are instantly sent a text message with a link to my website. Inbound emails are instantly sent both an email and text with a link to my website.

On the website they need to pre-qualify (estimated FICO and income), then they can schedule their showing on-line.

I use a number of cloud software products

- Mail chimp (outbound emails)

- Call fire (outbound texts)

- Mail Parser (extract data out of inbound emails)

- Formstack (Form for pre-qualification)

- Acuity (on-line scheduling of showings)

- HubSpot (CRM)

- Zapier (Integration of data between above software products)

Charlotte is a very hot housing market. We advertise online and average 100+ responses to every ad requesting showings. Roughly 95% of the responses are via email which we respond to via automatic response with a list of questions. Only about 70% reply to that email which makes the list more manageable.

One question we do not ask in writing is the number of occupants since that could be an automatic fair housing red flag especially if it includes children which it almost always does.

FH's guideline for the number of occupants is based on the number of bedrooms. A 4 bedroom home can have up to 10 people (2/bedroom +2). A 1 bedroom can be up to 4. And children under the age of 1 do not count as occupants.

I'm going to need a link where you think that fair housing allows four people in a one bedroom.

It's based on room size.

Sorry to hijack the post. Most of the questions that I ask of been covered here.

Blue:

I tried to send copies of the links to the articles that show that a 4 bedroom could "reasonably" accommodate 10 people. I guess the powers to be determined it was spam so it never posted.

A little background. It all came up as a result of my showing one of our 4 BR homes. The woman told me she had 8 children. I kept my mouth shut and prayed that the look on my face didn't raise a red flag. I was thinking I would live with a vacant property for a year before I rented a house to 9 people of any age let alone children. Actually I'd rather have it used as a kennel than rent to 8 children ranging from <1 to 17.

In between showings I looked up fair housing. I found an article on one of the legal sites that showed how a 4 BR could reasonably accommodate 10 people and 1 bedroom 4 to 5 people using the 2 plus 2 rule.

Their analysis was based on litigation and some guidelines.

While not specifically stated it is considered case law that children under one are not counted. Period.

When all of the children all are under five many courts do not count them either. They will change the room size from 50SF per occupant for young children with 3 considered acceptable for a 90SF room.

Adults are a different matter but when it comes to large families with children all bets are off.

The next morning I called the NC RE Comm. for a decision on this and spoke with an atty. who specializes in Fair Housing law. She told me to tread carefully. The problem is that many large families are low income so it becomes a double whammy...discrimination or fair housing violation. Pick your poison. Her advice was to find ANY reason other than the number of children to decline her application.

Per the atty. the decisions are all over the place depending more on local ordinances that fed. laws. Ironically (at least to me) the more conservative the judges the more they always seem to side with the large families over the LL's.

If you read some the case findings from just about anywhere you find the court decisions in the same cities contradict a ruling by the same court on an almost identical case. It is a fuzzy law open to interpretation and certainly not one where I want to be the defendant.

NC, Thanks so much for continuing to share all the helpful information that you often do on this forum. It is appreciated.

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