"... then after my vacancy rate went up, my property taxes doubled, utilities increased, and rent control..."

The type of prospective tenant you attract is largely contingent on a number of factors including neighborhood, unit mix, rent rates and your marketing methods.  Attracting the best possible prospective tenant is the first step to selecting the best possible tenant.

The relationship between a landlord and a tenant should be cooperative, not adversarial.  Much like a shopkeeper and his customer, a landlord and his tenant want to establish a long term mutually beneficial relationship.  It must be based on respect for each others property, privacy, and right to profit.

As a shopkeeper markets to the appropriate customer for his wares, a landlord must understand how to market to attract quality tenants.  As a successful shopkeeper knows how to display his product in an attractive, neat and clean setting, a landlord must be sure that his available unit is ready to be shown to the most particular tenant.  As a shopkeeper knows that if he is not priced competitively his prospective customer can shop elsewhere, a landlord must know the rental market and keep his rents competitive.  A landlord that maintains a quality product will attract quality tenants or to say it in the negative - the best defense against attracting undesirable tenants is to be professional and prepared in your presentation.

Besides a professional image nothing should be more important than your intuition or gut feeling about a prospective tenant.  Unfortunately, relying on your instincts or worse yet a manager's first impression, is no way to run a business or determine who will be a responsible tenant.  All to often a tenant may appear to be more substantial and claim to be more financially capable than he truly is.  Twenty years of being a landlord has made me very skeptical and the best advise I can give is no matter what your gut feeling is about a prospective tenant - check him out!

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