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Property managers who don’t contact unsuccessful tenants may be damaging future relationships with good tenants.
Michael Gilbert, director of rentmyestate.com, said both landlords and agents spend too much time focusing on the successful candidate, and forget the other prospective tenants.
“Rather than facing those you don’t want living in your property, some agents choose to ignore the tenants they cannot accept. That is not good enough,” Mr Gilbert said.
“Especially when you consider that coming out for an inspection and completing a tenant application requires a good deal of effort. Some prospective tenants take it as a personal insult when their application is not accepted.”
According to Mr Gilbert, personally informing tenants that their application was unsuccessful shows "a lot of class" and can allow the tenant to apply to more of your properties in future without any awkward or hostile feelings.
“Contacting applicants before they contact you is a magical tactic," he said. "The magic is that they are not prepared for the encounter, but you are.
“This gives you the opportunity to be direct and to the point, but not short or rude obviously. Then you can get off the phone before they have time to think it through enough to ask questions.
“Even if you have a specific reason to reject an application, do not reveal it. You will just open a can of worms."
Mr Gilbert also said to make sure you update the listing to ‘under application’ to save you from getting calls for a house that is essentially off the market.
"Yes, removing your ad does the same thing, but 'under application' keeps the ad active in case your tenant falls through at the last minute," he said.
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