Common Mistakes that Landlords Make
As unbiased as we think we are…we still are subject to our subconscious biases. This is a scientific fact that we hold biases about people whether we believe we do or not. When landlords look over prospective applicants for their rental properties, they are bound by those same biases. Often a landlord will choose a tenant based on how like they are to themselves, or how they can see themselves in that prospective tenant. For example, if the landlord was a young professional who had worked hard to acquire their assets, they may look favorably at an applicant who presents as a young professional. Or if the landlord has a family, they may look at an applicant who is raising a family in a more favorable light. When in fact these characteristics say nothing about whether this potential renter will be responsible, ethical, or reliable. Rather, a landlord will project their own values on someone who seems to have similar attributes to themselves. This is called implicit bias in psychology and this applies to everyone, it is a mental shortcut and is prone to errors. This bias develops in all of us as our brain seeks out patterns in an overwhelming world, and unfortunately, we feel like we just “know” things about a person when we really don’t at all. We all are subject to implicit attitudes and stereotypes and this affects all aspects of our lives.
It is for this reason that perhaps when interviewing potential tenants it is wise to hand that over to a property manager or at least get a second or third set of eyes on the applicants. That way you reduce the odds of your personal biases clouding or informing your decisions about something as important as who you will let live on your property. As we have discovered, making a poor choice in tenants can be time-consuming and costly. Unlike when you hire the wrong person for a job, you cannot just fire your tenant. Tenants have rights and the law in Costa Rica tends to favor tenants due to their inherent perceived (legitimate or not) vulnerability.
We often attribute certain characteristics to someone based on their gender, age, nationality, or cultural/religious orientation. When in actuality those details do not pertain to a person’s character or integrity at all. Perhaps you assume that an older person would tend to be more responsible than a younger person, when in reality age does not account for character. I will give the case of a landlord who lowered their rent to accommodate a single senior man under the assumption that a single tenant of advanced age would likely be more reliable and do less damage than say for example a large family of 5 with pets. It turns out that this senior gentleman not only damaged the property significantly but was extremely difficult to rehome. Those implicit biases were at play when the landlord had made the choice to rent to them. They had projected what their experience was with the elderly in their own family. They may have projected that this senior would take early bedtime, be routine or fastidious, reliable, harmless, or similar elder stereotypes based on the patterns they had seen. Perhaps if they had based their decision solely on credit history, references, and the ability to pay the full rent asked, they likely would have chosen differently.
Another trap landlords fall into the trusted information bias trap. This is the phenomenon where if a stranger tells you a piece of information you receive it with reasonable skepticism but if a friend or “trusted source” tells you the same piece of information you are far more likely to take it as a fact. When it comes to potential renters, we have seen endless scenarios where tenants were vouched for by a landlord’s friends or family, only to find out that those opinions were incorrect or unfounded. Often a landlord won’t even do their diligence about a potential tenant if they are vouched for by a trusted source. Nothing gets ugly faster than when you trust the judgment of someone close to you simply on their word and it turns out they misled you or were misinformed themselves about a tenant’s character.
Do yourself a favor, and hire a property management company to process potential rental applicants. They act as a more unbiased filter for your business and they are more accountable for the results as that is their job to audit potential renters and protect their clients. If you are reading this and saying, “Ahh, I wish I had done this before I was in the position I am now with these bad tenants!” remember this is all a learning experience and there are laws to protect you and your property too.