Landlords, you have done everything right so far you advertised your property, arranged viewings, checked the tenants credit history and taken previous landlord and employment references or you have paid a letting agent to do everything for you.
Now you can provide yourself with peace of mind by logging onto Google and you favourite social media sites to cross reference your new potential tenant. Earlier this year Facebook hit 30 million UK users and is now averaging 1 million new users a month, Twitter as roughly 15 million registered users in the UK and LinkedIn has 5 million UK users with over half a million of us using the site each day and let's not forget Google+ which is growing from strength to strength had had acquired over 20 Million global users in a matter of weeks.
The Social Media explosion has made it easier than even to make sure everything you have been told by your potential tenant rings true. But what can be done to really delve into the world of your potential tenant? The answer is Social Media and search engines such as Google, by spending a few moments online armed with a search engine of choice and information such as a tenant's name, location and employer details you can begin to really see if you are dealing with the" perfect tenant" or the "tenant from hell".
So here are a few steps to online tenant stalking, I mean carrying out a tenant reference using Google:
STEP 1: Simple Google Search
Open up Google and search for your tenants name and location as follows
"john smith" AND london
You can see in the example that the tenants name is surrounded by quotation marks, this is because search engines such as Google will return results of all the words in your search i.e. results containing John and Smith whereas if we use quotation marks we are telling Google to search for a specific term in this case the name "john smith".
You can see the word "AND" in capital letters this is because search engines such as Google use Boolean logic when conducting a search, the AND operator must be written in capital letters as we are effectively commanding Google to search for the tenant "john smith" with any connection to the location London.
Obviously this is a very loose search and will return many results, but this is a very good place to start and this type of search will return any news relating to your tenant in a specified location and a good place to begin to narrow down your search.
Step 2: Employment Check
You can also check the tenant's employment references stack up, by once again carrying out a simple search on Google:
"john smith" AND "company name"
Most companies now have pages listed on LinkedIn and many professionals across the UK have created a LinkedIn profile, so chances are a simple search will bring back some results also this simple search will bring back company director's results and company news.
Alternatively, you can search the tenant's company name and job titles such as HR Manager so ensure the company contact provided by the tenant is actually the person they say they are and not the tenants mate.
A good example would be:
"hr manager" AND "abc accountants"
OR
"human resources manager" AND "abc accountants"
These are some of the most basic techniques we use at WebLetz a Cardiff lettings agent to ensure every tenant that registers with us undergoes a through tenant reference procedure.
If you would like to receive more in depth techniques on how to cross reference tenants via Google, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter without having a social media account email for our FREE guide to "tenant referencing via Google and Social Media"
Please Include the following:
"Tenant Referencing via Google" in the subject line Your name, location and contact number in the body of the email
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