The Underground Landlord

 Hello everyone. My name is David and I am the original and the official Underground Landlord.  I have been in the rental business for over 20 years. I have made almost every mistake possible along the way and my woes can become experience for you. Hopefully from the mistakes I have made you can glean some wisdom and save yourself some major problems along the way.

As you know the first step in becoming a landlord is buying a property.  Obviously you need to get the property at a good price for it to be viable and many times this includes buying properties that need some work and you putting the sweat equity in them to make them what you want. You will hear lots of speakers talking about cap rate, return on investment, etc. etc. etc.. These are all very important but fortunately if you get one of these wrong it's not the end of the world,  There are however a few skills you need to master to be successful in the rental business. 

To be very successful in the rental business as a frugal real estate investor you need to and least be competent in Tenant Selection and Tenant Screening . This comes by years of doing it and researching how others have been successful at the art but there are some available services out there that can greatly aid in the process. For starters, gather as much information from the prospective tenant as you can and have them sign the appropriate paperwork to allow you to do your due diligence and background checks.  You are now ready to check the tenant out. There are numerous services that you can pay for to do these but there are also free services available as well. One such service is Underground Landlord. This URL, http://www.undergroundlandlord.com is a landlord to landlord site that is peer updated and maintained to allow you up to date information.

This site allows you your very own database to store any and all tenants whom have left you in a bad way. It also has databases for each and every landlord on the site. When you search for a prospective tenant it returns a weighted search based on the information you have input. If you do not have anything but a first and last name the system is designed to not return a result. However if you have a first and last name and possibly last four digits of a SS number or a drivers license number and another landlord has matching info it will return the landlord. It will return up to 5 landlords per search with matching info in their database and give you their contact information so you and they can discuss your prospective tenant and make an informed decision from there.