What is a good or a bad tenant? In this post, we tell of some funny examples of the worst things to mention to leasers based on a contest we launched – while giving you some tips to increase your chances of getting an apartment to rent.
To obtain this much desired rental in Switzerland or elsewhere, it would NOT be wise to proceed with the following 8 tips with a real estate agency – otherwise you will definitely have the worst ever profile. No less than 40 fictitious rental applications were submitted to our contest of the funniest and most convincing rental application and some nice (translated) extracts can be found below.
1) Indicate a serious occupation such as ‘Smoke seller’ or better ‘Fly wanker’ (sic).
If your work is of this type, it would be better to introduce you to this apartment for rent as a simple ‘seller’ or as a ‘farmer’ … Rental agencies focus only little on the occupation of the applicants in general, but it is an important indication on the reported income, we will return to this topic in a future post.
2) Put forward your motivation as an angry person such as ‘Very thorough apartment Demolisher’.
Fortunately for that person, agencies rarely ask the question of the motivation like the rental application online of Immodating does as his answer was not ideal… For an apartment to rent, perhaps it would be better to mention the positive aspects of your work in the field of … construction?
3) Show how you love your parties.
This tenant indicated he liked some entertaining parties to say the least ‘Naturally sociable, I love organising drinking parties with my friends, their children, and all their many pets’. In the same vein why not appear serious by mentioning a tattoo that says ‘legalization is the way’? If you insist, it might be wiser to speak of your friendly attitude without further details…
4) Happily display your many prosecutions / poursuites.
The online rental application for tenants of Immodating asks whether you had some prosecutions and financial dues in the last 2 years as well as their origin. One of you mentioned as a source of such prosecutions ‘Chased by the police following a bank robbery’. We start to understand why real estate agencies ask for the extract of the prosecution office (extrait de l’office des poursuites) when submitting a rental application! More on this in a future post too.
5) Explain that you are moving because you hate your current neighbours.
This may well be true but it is somewhat negative to move by hatred… Fortunately, one of you explained this pattern ‘My neighbour looks exactly like Mr. Bean’ – who would not move in this case?
6) Be a publicly noisy tenant.
In the section on the existence of sources of noise in your profile location, a user helped us imagine the frequent cries in his apartment when she indicated ‘My clients (I’m amateur acupuncturist’! If this is a frequent activity and therefore frequent source of noise, it is normal to indicate it otherwise, but it is probably not necessary otherwise…
7) Scare them off with your night raids and other nice motivation.
In the section on the applicant’s motivation, one of you said, ‘Well, I’ve destroyed my place so I need another’ – logic you might say as motivation! More subtle, when indicating the reason to move, one said ‘I am bored under the bridge’. Or, to be more explicit as an ideal tenant ‘The farm in question looks spacious and relatively well insulated (I am tired of the raids at my place for disturbing the peace)’!
8) And why not provide a solid reference person such as ‘Jean Demolished’.
This person may well be an excellent reference and we hope he is known by the agency as his name sounds a bit like ‘I demolished’, which does not bode well. And of course, the sweet reference of ‘Mom’ might not be suitable if you want the agency to trust you on your age!
The 3 winners of the contest are Alberto, Emmannuel, and Novella who each won an Amazon coupon for 50 euros, congratulations!
Very cool!