Monday, June 25, 2007

We have tenants...sort of

I know I left you all in suspense when I posted about receiving an application and beginning my review of it. In short, we have approved two tenants, but it was a pretty difficult process.

Once I received both applications, I was all set to review them by (1) ordering credit reports (2) verifying information on the applications (3) figuring out what actual income was and (4) calling references. When I went to order the credit reports, I hit my first brick wall. Apparently, beginning January 1, 2007, if you order credit reports, you must have a site visit to verify that you keep personal information secure. I imagine the goals of such legislation (to prevent identity theft I imagine) are definitely worthwhile, but for the landlord with one property, such as yours truly, this puts a delay into application review. They do have tenant search firms that will pull the credit report for you but not show it to you. You just say a certain category of credit scores, and they will tell you if those apply.

While I was working on the credit report issue, we had an issue with both our Internet and our phone lines. They both decided to quit. I had to assess the situation-whether it was a AT&T issue or a This Old Chicago 2 Flat issue. AT&T then gives me 8 hours that they will fix it. 8 hours?!? I'm too reliant on the Internet-that's where I do my research. Then, no phone line made it hard to just call references, send faxes and the like. My big gold star for the day came when I came up with a way to send a fax via e-mail using my treo. (that big use of all the technology at hand-including password protecting the documents, was what allowed us to proceed with the credit report analysis).

With all that, we finally accepted the applications, sent out the lease and disclosures, and are now waiting for the security deposit and signature from one of the tenants. Generally, I'll feel much better once we have signed leases and the security deposit in our posession.

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