I’ve been wondering lately who is looking to rent and how the process has changed. Lucky for me, we had a house become vacant at the end of May 2020. Miss Defy listed the house and surprisingly we had a lot of interest. While the property was listed, we had a total of 50 inquiries and 15 people set up showings. But numbers aside, I was more interested in the stories of the people. What drove them to want to look for a place to rent while protests and pandemics abounded? Here are profiles of 7 of them followed by a bulleted list of how the rental process has changed:
First knock on the door, a landscaping business-owning father and his daughter. He commutes 2 hours into the mountains for work and was looking for a place with easy highway access. He wanted an extra bedroom in the house, so they could have a place for the new homeschooling they were doing (it was never really clear why if he had to drive two hours for work and was now homeschooling why they didn’t live and homeschool closer to his job). They loved the house and made it seem like we had a low bar to meet- the house they were currently living in only had a few functioning outlets, so they would run extension cords from room to room. They only met their Canadian landlord once- she came to town for the weekend, arrived at the house at 5 pm totally drunk and continued to imbibe. I told him I hoped he wouldn’t be expecting us to be drinking with him every weekend. They needed to look at one more house before applying. He emailed us a day later and said the other house was closer to the highway and was nice enough. It was kind of him to send an update email.
Next knock, a husband and wife from the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. They were selling their home the same day they were touring our rental property. He worked in higher education and was supposed to be changing jobs to Ohio. A week before they were planning to leave, a local university he loved called and said they wanted to offer him a job. He jumped at the opportunity, but since their home was already sold, they found themselves needing to rent for the upcoming school year. The couple was very eager, offered cash for the whole year (since they had just sold their home) but started acting oddly when Miss Defy said that even with paying everything up front, we would still need to do a background check. The wife wondered why a background check would even be necessary if they paid in cash. We explained that we still had to do our due-diligence and get a better picture of who we were renting to. After all their enthusiasm they ghosted us, and we never heard another word from them despite reaching out twice. Something happened with either the job situation or the background check and we have been speculating more and more fantastic scenarios.
Three friends who all work as bartenders were next to arrive. Ordinarily we wouldn’t balk at having friends rent together because it gives three streams of income but working in the service industry is particularly volatile right now. Their rental application gave red flags for potentially inflated income and they said they were hoping they would be back to earning more money soon. They also said that they wanted to move-in mid-July and were hoping we could pro-rate the rent. They applied but with the questionable income notification by the background check company we decided to hold off.
Next arrival, a husband and wife moving from California. The wife explained that the husband would be waiting in the car while she toured the house- they had their dogs with them because they didn’t feel comfortable boarding them in crowded kennels at the moment. They seemed to enjoy the house (he particularly loved that there was a fireplace) and said they planned on applying. That was until her eyes bulged at the mention that street parking can be challenging, but there was plenty of driveway parking. Don’t they have competitive street-parking in California too? No application submitted.
The following prospective tenant was a woman in her early 30s. She was recently laid off from her job on the east coast and moved in with her ailing parents. She said she was currently looking for work and would have her parents co-sign with her. She requested the option of re-signing the lease 6 months into the year so she could take her parents off. Never applied.
Next up a young 20-something woman and her mom. The mom seemed very concerned about certain aspects of the house (why are utilities that high? You expect the tenants to water the lawn and also pay for the water bill?) but said she would not be living there. The young woman said she would be living with two other young women and that she would show them the pictures before they would decide on applying. Pre-covid it was more likely that the other two women would want to look at the house before applying, but they applied sight-unseen. They passed the online screening.
And finally, since there is always at least one bizarre interaction brought to life through the internet, we had a couple wanting to move from downtown Denver. Miss Defy was very direct in the ad- Move-in July 1. First thing they say (and it was very easy to understand them because they were the only people that didn’t have masks on, also requested in the ad), first thing they say is can we move in August 1? Since they are there Miss Defy tries to finish the tour but half-way through the guy asks how we feel about recent felonies? “Don’t worry,” he says. “It wasn’t a violent crime, I was only charged as an accomplice.”
All things considered, it was not a terrible process. We decided to go with the three young women with their varied income streams, support from parents and a passed background check. All told, it took 6 days from the initial ad posting to having a signed lease, a quick and efficient turn-around even for “normal days.”
How the process of renting is different:
- Some people avoided touching anything. All doors inside were left open for them. There were some awkward moments like when visitors would stand in front of the front door, waiting to be let out.
- Masks were strongly encouraged. Our only non-masked person was the convicted felon that was hoping we would leave the property vacant for a month in order to save it for him.
- We had to surreptitiously watch visitors and what they contacted. Some did not mind touching walls, countertops, doors and more, so we had to re-enact their walkthrough and wipe everything down.
- No open houses. I’ve never been a fan of crowded open houses, but doubly so now. Each person had a scheduled time to view visit the property with a buffer for cleaning before the next person’s timeslot.
- More out of state people requested virtual showings and expressed their intention of signing a lease without seeing the property in person.
Ideally for us we wouldn’t be renting out a house right now either, but I guess it does come with its advantages. Primarily, we were able to re-adjust our choice of tenants with the new economy in mind. Adding updates to the house also let us have something to focus on during the days of quarantine following our trip to New York. Hopefully, we’ll be closer to “normal” for the next time we need to rent a house.
