Landlord Tools: Renting Your Property
Marketing
- Put a sign with your phone number in the front. Use stickers with large number for easy-to-read signs.
- Post a free ad for your property on Craig’s List http://denver.craigslist.org/.
- Post ads with the Denver Post—online, in the paper, or both—for a fee http://www.postnewsads.com/onlinead/.
- You can also try posting ads on websites such as rentals.com or rentclicks.com for a fee and take advantage of features such as property photos and virtual tours of your property.
Questions to Ask When Screening New Tenants:
When verifying employment:
- Is he/she currently employed?
- In good standing?
- What are his/her chances of continued employment? Are they going to continue working there?
- Anything else you can tell me?
When talking to past Landlords
- How were they as a tenant? Ever have any problems with them?
- Did they pay rent on time?
- Would you rent to them again?
Deposits
You can withhold all or part of the deposit to pay for:
- Unpaid rent, utilities, or late fees.
- Repairing damage other than normal wear and tear caused by the tenant.
- Restoring or replacing property taken by the tenant.
- Cleaning the unit to return it to the condition it was in when the tenant moved in.
After a tenant vacates a rental property, the landlord has 30 days (unless a longer period of time, not to exceed 60 days, is agreed to in the lease) to return the security deposit in full, or return a partial deposit with a written list of damages caused by the tenant and the necessary repairs. If the deposit is larger that the amount required for repairs, the landlord must return the balance of the deposit.
To protect everyone involved, make sure to review the property with the tenant at the beginning noting its condition on the Landlord-Tenant Checklist provided in this website. This same sheet is used at the end of the tenancy, so that you can easily assess anything that will need repair. For extra protection, taking pictures of the unit before tenancy is also a good idea.
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