and unfortunately protection was not used??? You get Rentberry apparently. A new SF startup. Very interesting. As a fairly hands on landlord, I wouldn’t use an outfit like this but some might and apparently it is doing well. What do you all think?
I am thinking about something along this line. I am about to rent my old house in San Jose next month, and I was thinking how I can fetch the highest rent for my place.
I won’t use this RentBerry stuff. I like money, but money isn’t everything. You don’t have an ongoing, multi-years relationship with your eBay sellers. With my tenants I do.
The “solution” I have so far is host 1 or 2 open houses, collect “bids” and hopefully I will get 2 or 3 good applicants. Then I can pit them against each other… 
And that is pretty much what I have done with my rentals. I have conducted visits throughout the day and collected apps and marked the ones that i wanted/not wanted and then scrutinized the “good” ones later. Now, maybe you know the answer to this, but is it true that technically we can’t “choose” amongst the pool of “good” candidates. And, of course, I am not talking about discriminating based on race, etc. I read some article in an owner’s assoc magazine that suggested that we are supposed to technically give the apartment to the FIRST qualified candidate we get in. Yes, what we do behind closed doors is our own business but I was somewhat surprised to read that. I may have to reread that article.
I don’t know the answer to that, but that sounds pretty counterintuitive. My impression is that when it comes to discrimination, renting and selling are covered by the same body of law? And I have never heard one is compelled to sell on a first-come-first-get basis.
Actually I would screen my tenants much more vigorously than my buyers. How could you not?
Our Property management company does it this way–First on the pile gets the place if every adult on the lease passes inspection. I don’t know that it means that it illegal to do otherwise though. I thought it was pretty odd, but I can see that they have to have a professional detachment from who rents the place whereas a mom&pop interviewing may have an argument for renting to the best “customer” based on better personal interactions and a good match for what tenants want to do with the place and what landlord allows.
Right. I think the “first come first serve” is safer for professional managers who see large volume of applications. It’s iron-clad if they were ever challenged in court. Frankly they don’t have any incentive to do otherwise. Managers get money from owners either way.
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Well, first reported on this back in 5/16 and still around…
I’d bet retention is low. At least with a house sale, the buyer is stuck.