I am sure with that headline and what I am about to say will get me some hate e-mail, but I just tell like I see it (even if it is not 100% politically correct or polite). So I stopped by one of my units in Northeast Minneapolis this weekend to find that the tenant moved out in the middle of the night, owing me May rent.  Nice!  On top of that they left a couple pieces of furniture in the house, 2 beds in the yard, and no cleaning (surprise).  How did this happen to me again?

As I was having a little pity party in my unit, I had an epiphany.  This tenant had some telltale signs that I should have picked up on when I showed her the unit the first time.  While none of these are 100% reliable and I am sure there are many exceptions, and while I am sure I will get hate mail for saying some of these things, just chalk this up to my gut feeling and experience over the years.  Here are some correlations that I have noticed with bad tenants:

• One of my big pet peeves is seeing window screens pushed out or damaged on rental properties.  I don’t think I have ever wrecked a screen at my house.  I see tenants push them out all the time.  In fact I had a tenant last summer simply push the window air conditioner through the screen instead of removing it!  Bad tenants seem to treat the screens on the house like the treat the rest of the house.  They abuse it.  By stopping by and checking out their current living situation, you should be able to notice this.
• When you are running the tenant’s application, if there are any credit issues, collection items, or evictions, that is going to continue to be a problem.  Now I understand if you got laid off, went through a divorce, got sick and had a period in your life well that is explainable, but most bad tenants just seem to have no regard for payment of bills.  Just like any bad habit, once they get used to doing it often, it gets easy.

While I could go on and on, these are some quick thoughts that come to mind (and help me vent my frustrations).