 having focused quite a bit on renting and how one goes about finding the perfect rental to suit your specific needs to being the landlord and wanting to rent his or her property. This morning Simon Bray CEO of Private Property is here and we're focusing on what it takes to manage your rental. Simon so good to see you here again. Good morning, good to see you again. It's good to be here. Now last week we chatted about listing your property on private property for free. Once the listing has gone live and prospective tenants has started viewing it. When it comes to the landlord how does the landlord go about finding the right tenant? Well I mean that's the most important question for every landlord. You know a rental apartment is only as good an investment as the tenants you put in it. If it's a great tenant it's a great investment. If it's a poor tenant I mean it can cause all sorts of financial problems for the landlord. So finding the right person is critically important and it's almost like interviewing someone for a job. So you shouldn't get sensitive about asking certain questions. Certainly meet the person face to face. A lot of landlords make the mistake of trying to do it just over the phone and they don't have a close enough relationship with the tenant to make the call that they need to make. You can check references, you can check employment, you can do a credit check on them with their permission and all of that will assist you in ultimately getting the right person for your rental apartment. Now I think we've all been renters or tenants at some point in our lives but how important is a lease agreement? Yeah I mean the lease agreement is ultimately the contract that the two parties enter into and it's a it's a really important part of a relationship. I think a lot of people don't take the time required at the beginning of a relationship to set up the ground rules and that's what the lease does. You know legally speaking you don't have to have a written lease but we certainly don't recommend that. Have a written lease and make sure that all the terms and conditions that you need are in that lease. In fact we've got a great example of one on our advice centre so if anyone's looking for one they can go there search for it and download it. What are the kind of things however just mention a few that need to go into the lease agreement because it's something that I always insist on having so that you don't have any niggly situations further down the line. Look you can put all sorts of things into a rental lease you know you can talk about fittings you can talk about who should put in an air con and who splits the cost and all sorts of things like that. Annual increases as well. Yes well those are the big four right the big four are what are you going to pay every month what's your rental make sure that that's in there. How is that going to escalate at the end of the rental period so if they want to renew is it a 10% increase what does the escalation look like. Very important that the deposit is reflected in there and the critical one that a lot of people just gloss over is the inspection sheet when you move in make sure you walk through with your tenant take photos write down all the different scuffs and dents and dings in the apartment to make sure that at the end of the period you've got something to compare it to and you can decide whether any damages occur. Very important you mentioned deposits as well now how does the deposit come into play how should it be handled what is it used for or when the landlord gets the money is it like who lives like this or did they put it away. Yeah look unfortunately because you've got a lot of private landlords in South Africa there isn't a lot of understanding on what you meant to do with the deposit it's meant to sit in trust effectively so go into a bank account and earn interest until you pay it back to the tenant at the end of the lease you certainly don't want to go and buy your next big screen TV with it and then not have the money when the tenant moves out. So yeah interest bearing account hang on to it and of course it's your insurance if the tenant defaults on their rental or damages the apartment or house. And then very quickly how does one handle a bad tenant. Oh it's everyone's worst nightmare you know the number of search queries we get on our advice centre with people like what do I do how do I handle the situation. The real important advice is don't take matters into your own hand don't recut keys don't turn off water or electricity all that kind of thing the courts really do look on that negatively I think rather approach and turny get some legal advice and they'll point you in the right direction. Wonderful that's why we have you here just to make sure you smooth out all of these situations for us. Simon Bray thank you so much for joining us here again awesome stuff now if you would like any more advice when it comes to managing your rental property why don't you go and visit www.privateproperty.co.za and get all the information in One Hub.