Finding a good tenant is indeed a very tough task, primarily because, it is hard to find people, who would take care of your home, the same way, as you would expect them to do. Quite often, you might have a tenant, who would take great care to diminish the value of your property, by drilling holes in the walls, scratching up the wood work and sometimes cause grave damage to your property.

Although you may have the security deposit of the tenant, but if you do not take proper care, you might end up paying out of your pocket, to refurnish the damage caused to your property by the tenant. Finding a good tenant therefore, should be of great concern for you, for the proper upkeep of your property.

Like always, good and bad people exist in every field; and so is it in case of tenant. Although good tenants, may not come by too often; they do exist. Proper screening of a tenant can help you find a good tenant for your rental property. The following are some of the ways, by which you can conduct screening of your prospective tenant, to see whether he is suitable enough or not:

1. Personal interviews

By way of conducting personal interviews, you can have a bit of idea, to figure out the suitability of a tenant. If you are good at reading thoughts, you can get a fair deal of idea. A novel way, to conduct a screening test, is by way of psychological tests, which can give a fair deal of idea, whether or not; a guy is of vandalistic nature. Although such tests can not be said to be the ultimate screening technique; they surely do come up with fairly accurate results.

2. Talk to previous landlords of the tenant

This is another way of screening a tenant. As it is, you can personally meet (if possible) to the previous landlord of the tenant and figure out about the suitability of the tenant. While it may appear to be a stupendous task, it would definitely give you a fair deal of idea about the client.

3. Hiring professional screening services

A major advantage of hiring professional screening services is that they gather information from a wide range of sources. These sources may range from court records, police blotters, credit bureaus, and so on. Needless to say, that the more varied the information, the higher the accuracy level. However, in their zeal and the mode of collecting information, screening services may quite often brand good tenants as bad tenants. But this is quite rare.

Finding a good tenant is more or less of a necessity for a rental property investor. Proper screening helps a lot in taking care of this necessity. You may take help of the above mentioned methods, to, conduct proper screening of your prospective client, to come across a suitable tenant.

There are a lot of ways to save energy especially in one’s household and being environment friendly can be easier than you think.

Here are a few suggestions on how to make your holiday home environmentally friendly and still allow for a great vacation rental opportunity:

Make a list of eco-friendly “house rules” for your guests to follow once they are in your vacation home:

- Ask your holiday home guests to make sure air conditioners are off if doors are open or they are going out.

- Ask holiday guests to turn down (in colder environments) the heating thermostat by at least a degree Celsius, this will help save energy and decrease harmful emissions such as carbon dioxide.

- Ask holiday guests to turn off lights and switch appliances off when they are going out or not using a room.

- Advise guests to take advantage of the holiday sunshine when washing their clothes instead of using machine dryers – provide a clothes line so that clothes can be dried outside.

- Tell guests to use any recycling bins provided so they can separate biodegradable and non-biodegradable wastes.

- Rainwater is better for garden plants than tap water, and can easily be collected and stored – provide your
vacation home with some method of collection of rainwater, water is becoming an increasingly scarce resource.

- As appealing as they can sometimes appear, try not to provide a gas patio heater as they use a huge amount of energy.

- For the swimming pool area, use eco-friendly products for the swimming pool, as much as possible buy products with fewer chemicals.

- Be sure your holiday home is well insulated; many state or local building codes include minimum requirements for home insulation. Be sure your new home or home addition meets those codes. It will save you money in the long run.

- Replace old appliances as they can consume a lot of energy; these days many appliances are efficiency tested – try to invest in energy efficient appliances.

- If the holiday property is empty make sure appliances are unplugged – many home electronics still consume energy even when they are turned off. Many devices on “standby mode” will continue to draw down power and help increase your electricity bill. Also, chargers and power adapters continue to draw power from the wall socket even if the device is not attached. Unplug these devices or use a power strip to turn off multiple units, when they aren’t being used to make sure that you are not wasting energy.

- Replace conventional incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs). They cost a little more, but last up to 10 times longer, use two-thirds less energy and give off 70 percent less heat.