How to pick tenants?
Hi all,
I’m about to become a first time landlord.
There is a lot of interest in the property, it was advertised on Wednesday and by Thursday afternoon, the agent had over 50 enquires.
I did 8 viewings on Friday with the agent and most of them seemed pretty good.
However, there is a lady, my neighbour’s friend, whom I quite liked.
It would just be her and her son, she’s self employed making £60k+ a year and has been in her previous house for 14 years. She’s moving due to downsizing a bit as she doesn’t need that big a house anymore. However, she has some old CCJs on her credit that she was upfront about. She said it wasn’t related to any rent arrears. Not sure what it was for or how much.
I did quite like her and her son is into gardening so my large garden would be well taken care of, but I’m worried about the CCJs.
She has the highest salary of any of the applicants that I met and she seemed lovely, plus since she’s my neighbours friend (we have a good relationship), it would be easy to stay on top of a lot of the potential issues.
I’m looking for some advice as I’m pretty nervous about renting my house as you can imagine. Would the CCJs in this instance be a deal breaker?
I will be a non resident landlord and I instructed an agent on full management to collect rent and take care of everyday issues but I’d like to stay in contact with the tenant in general to be on the safer side.