We offer many tenant notices and agreement forms here at Landlord Forms, but there is nothing more important than the Rental Application Form. With out that, you may never find a decent tenant to serve those forms to.
A basic rental application form is used when you, the landlord, need to find out more information about your potential tenants. There is a lot of information that you need to get from a tenant before they move in and our rental application template can help you get all of the important information that you need.
When trying to find the perfect tenant for your property, knowing the right questions to put on your rental application form can be a huge bonus to you and can save you, the landlord, a ton of time and help you find the right person for your property. You can print rental application forms and many others, as they are included in our Landlord Forms package.
Our rental application form is highly customizable and helps you ask the right questions of your potential tenants. We give you all of the options you need to create successful rental applications.
Below you will find some common questions associated with rental application forms that we receive in our inbox.
Why do I need a rental application form?
When renting a property, you will probably be getting a lot of phone calls and emails from potential renters. While it may seem tempting to take the first person who applies to stop the calls and emails, it is in your best interest to have a strong rental application form and a good set of questions in order to find a candidate that best fits your property.
Our basic rental application form is highly customizable so that you can add whatever questions you need to add. Even better, you can print as many as you want once you purchase our Landlord package.
What types of questions should I ask on a rental application form?
You will need to be very thorough when selecting your candidates, but you also don’t want to be overwhelmed with the amount of information in front of you. A solid, basic rental agreement is what you are looking for.
Here are a few suggestions on potential questions that you can add to your rental applications, broken into sections.
Rental history:
- If/Where the tenant currently rents and any landlord information?
- The potential tenant’s length of time in their current home or apartement.
- The tenants preferred move-in date.
- Has the tenant ever been evicted?
Tenant background:
- Potential tenants current work information. Place of business, estimated income and contact.
- Any additional tenants that would be living on the property. Ie: roommates, spouses, girlfriends, children, etc
- Is the tenant a smoker?
- Does the tenant have any pets?
- How many parking spaces would be required?
- Has the tenant filed for bankruptcy recently?
The purpose of these questions is to limit the number of applicants that you don’t want to rent to. This types of questions will allow you to find good tenants that you can rent to.
Should I run a background check?
Yes. It is important to run both a credit check and a criminal background check on all of your potential tenants. You will need their consent to do so, but it is important to know this before. You can add the consent right through the rental application form. It is a usual practice for the potential tenant to pay for the credit check, you just need to make that clear to them and know how much it will cost beforehand.
Do I have to ask all applicants for a credit history and a background check?
If you are going to ask one potential tenant for these things, you need to ask all potential tenants for this. You need to do this to avoid any charges of discrimination. You might not have any discriminatory thoughts in your mind when doing this, but to an outside observer it doesn’t look good and could open you up to legal action.
Do you have rental application PDFs or a rental application form for Word?
With our Landlord Package, you can get the forms in any file type that you would like and works best for your computer set-up.
PDF is probably our most popular for basic rental application forms, you can use Adobe Acrobat or whatever PDF viewer you prefer to look at this.
We also let you make them rental forms in .DOC for Microsoft Word, .RTF or even HTML. Whatever your preferred file type is, you can create it in our template and print rental application forms right from your home computer.
The .RTF is preferred by a lot of people without Microsoft Word. You can use this file type in free word processing software like OpenOffice or even Google Drive.
After you purchase our Landlord Package you get the option to download your rental application form in any or all of these formats.
Do you have a free rental application?
No. Our rental application form is not free. That said, once you sign up with our Landlord Package you will be able to create and download as many rental application forms as you would like. You are not limited to just the one and you can edit your form. You can print and save as many as you like when signing up for our package.
In addition to our rental application form template, you get a number of other notices that you may find useful. Everything from breach of lease notices to rent increase notices to notice to enter forms. You will be able to create all of these forms on the site and print them for your use.
How long does it take to process a rental application?
This question isn’t from landlords but we get a lot of people stumbling upon our site who are searching for the answer to this.
It can differ depending on the landlord and the property management team, but honestly you shouldn’t have to wait more than 48 hours. In slower rental markets, it should be quicker. As honestly in the life of a landlord, an application form is their number one priority. They will look into it promptly. The only difference of course is if the property receives many rental applications at the same time. Then it can take a little longer as they may want to thoroughly explore checking references etc.
Rental Application for a Specific State:
We’re always asked if we have rental applications for specific states. Landlords looking for a rental application form for California, or a rental application form for Florida or Texas.
Our rental application form is set up to accomodate any and all states. It’s an open rental application form that is not constructed just for one state – no matter if you are in Texas or Illinois, you’ll be able to create a rental application form that suits you.
Is Your Rental Application Printable?
Of course!
Our rental application is printable in various different formats as mentioned above – in PDF, RTF, DOC and even HTML.
What this means it that you can print your rental application form after creating it immediately and from anywhere. You don’t even have to download it – you can keep it stored in the cloud.
We also have no limit on storage space or time. So you can create a rental application today, then revisit it 4 years from now and not have to pay any money and it will still be there. It’s a lifetime access to the form.
Do you have Rental / Lease Application Forms?
Yes our rental application is a catch all form and is open to any requirement you have. It asks the information from the tenant that you require and you can of course customize it to your requirements.
Is this a free fillable rental application?
It’s a fillable form yes. However it’s not free unfortunately but it’s part of our landlord package of forms.
The good thing is once you purchase our landlord package you don’t have to pay anything ever again. Along with the rental application, you will get a rental agreement, a rent to own form, notices to enter or notices to pay and quit and so many more.
What this means is that you have every single possible landlord form required – including rental applications – simply by making that one time payment.
It’s a one time payment too so after you make this purchase once, you never have to make a payment again. And even when we add new forms – which is on average once per week – you’ll never have to make an additional purchase. You’ll get all new forms for free! And can even request forms for us to add!