How long should a tenant reference take to complete?
Dear Samii
On average, how long should a tenant reference take to complete?
Samii says
Lol, how long is a piece of string?!… Seriously though; it really depends on what you actually want from your reference.
At Tenant Referencing UK we are experiencing a notable increase in landlords fretting about our referencing process taking longer than other referencing companies around.
The truth is, is that everything in life that’s done properly takes that little bit longer.
We are also aware that some people do not realise that our Financial Reports from Equifax take just 6 seconds to return an applicants financial data. So if we wanted to do the same type of referencing as any other tenant referencing company our data processors would simply:
- telephone the tenant and take the minimum details,
- then carry out financial report in 6 seconds,
- then we would phone the employer as given by the tenant and get a verbal reference,
- and then phone the previous landlord as given by the tenant.
In essence our data processors could probably do an entire reference on this basis within 2 hours max. However the question is this: is that really what you want?
This is because:
- A financial report will not tell you anything about the tenants lifestyle, their rental history, etc.
- Calling an employer based on the tenants information will not establish that they are anything to do with the tenant.
- Calling a previous landlord based on the tenants information will not establish that they are anything to do with the tenant either.
Is this really what you want? ? ?
And this is the reason why our tenant referencing is so good, because it is the most comprehensive and proactive system around.
Our serviced referencing process is:
At LandlordReferencing.co.uk we cannot shorten the referencing process without compromising on its accuracy and efficiency, so if you are willing to compromise to shorten the process then you could be spending alot more time trying to get a bad tenant out of your property further down the line.
Have you got a tenant referencing question?
Then simply email samii@landlordreferencing.co.uk and it may feature here, helping other landlords and letting agents with the same query in the future.
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