Deposit Alternatives, Tenant

How to Find Great Tenants and Keep Them

Learn how to find great tenants (and keep them). We cover strategies like thorough tenant screening, offering rental deposit alternatives, and much more.

With the rental demand in Canada as strong as it is, you might have more prospective tenants to screen than ever. While finding tenants might not be the challenge, finding great tenants can be.

Who do you consider a “good” tenant? For most property managers, qualities like “pays rent on time,” “cares for the property,” and “communicates with me about any issues” come to mind.

How to Find Great Tenants

As for how to find these great tenants (and keep them), this blog post will tell you just that.

Tenant Screening

An effective screening process for your tenants will likely be one of the most important things you do to get good tenants.

Selecting your tenants carefully based on their background can really help you weed out potentially “bad” tenants and find the people who will respect your property and be prompt with their rent payments.

Here are four things to include in your rental screening:

Credit Score

Canadian landlords can legally run credit checks on prospective tenants, provided they obtain written permission to do so. The results of this check typically aren’t what you’ll base your entire decision on. Instead, they paint part of a comprehensive picture of a tenant’s financial history.

Background Checks

According to the results of a 2023 TransUnion survey, only 30% of landlords always do background checks on tenants; 37% never do.

These numbers are even more surprising, considering 51% of landlords list receiving fraudulent information from tenants as a concern.

You can search a potential applicant’s criminal records on the National Repository of Criminal Records with their name and date of birth.

These records come from the Canadian Police Information Centre (CPIC) and might tell you if a prospective tenant was previously evicted or has a criminal record. Learn more.

Rental History

Collect information from previous landlords about the applicant’s history of renting. Did they pay their rent on time? Did they take good care of the property? Use this information to guide your decision-making process.

Employment Verification

When you verify a prospective tenant’s employment, this can tell you whether they have a job that provides them with enough income to make rent payments.

It’s also important to know what NOT to include in your tenant screening process.

The Canadian Human Rights Act prohibits discrimination from property owners when selling or renting housing and other real-estate-related transactions, including mortgage lending and zoning.

Under this law, you cannot discriminate against potential tenants on the basis of:

Race, colour, or ethnic background
Religious beliefs or practices
Ancestry
Country of origin
Citizenship, including refugee status
Sex (including pregnancy and gender identity)
Family status
Marital status, including people with a same-sex partner
Sexual orientation
Disability
Age (including 16 or 17-year-olds who no longer live with their parents)
Receiving public assistance

Setting Clear Expectations

Convey your expectations upfront with prospective tenants. Include what’s spelled out in the lease, what the tenant is responsible for versus the landlord, and tenancy rules (regarding noise levels, pets, children, guests, etc).

Having these expectations in writing from the get-go prevents ambiguity about what you expect from the tenant. Not only can this help ensure the tenant is a good one, but in the event they are not, a written record of this agreement will be useful.

Offering Incentives

Great tenants can be tough to keep in a competitive market. If you want to hold on to your best tenants, certain incentives can help.

Flexible Lease Terms: Offering leases that work for both short and long-term renters may appeal to more potential tenants.

Maintenance and Upgrades: Cosmetic maintenance upgrades (think new appliances or a fresh coat of paint every few years) will show tenants you care about the property and their experience living there.

Responsiveness: In a survey of more than 900 tenants, a landlord’s ability to be responsive and communicative took the top spot (38%) as the most important trait in a landlord. Second to this was the cost of rent, which 35% of people listed as their top consideration.

Offer Rental Deposit Alternatives: With costs an important consideration, landlords are wise to help their tenants reduce moving costs. With rental deposit alternatives like Rental Deposits Now, you can attract more tenants by drastically reducing their move-in costs.

Lower move-in costs appeal to a wider range of prospective tenants. In turn, you can expect strengthened margins, lower tenant debt load, and higher satisfaction and retention rates.

Find Out How Rental Deposit Alternatives Help You Find Good Tenants

Your tenant screening should be comprehensive to help you narrow down your pool of candidates.

Not only do you expect a lot from your tenants, but they can expect a lot in return. Offering them a rental deposit alternative, sparing them from having to pay a deposit upon moving in, could be what makes them choose your property over another.

Download our 2024 white paper, “The Rise of Rental Deposit Alternatives” to learn: