Keep the rent low. A great tenant is awesome.

Don't know who downvoted you but I absolutely agree. I have a few homes that I help rent with and having a good tenant is high above and away better than having a bad tenant pay more money. Just the cost alone in time is worth giving a good tenant cheaper rent.

I think the normal reasoning is that higher rent filters out the bad tenants (statistically). But once you have a good tenant then you probably don't want to raise the rent unless they move out and you're seeking a new one.

Another way to screen out bad tenants is to offer zero deposit for high credit score applicants. Several large apartment buildings in my city (DC) do this, and the buildings are full of professionals.

It is totally legal to refuse to rent to people with low credit scores, so that's an option too. Just keep the standard consistent no matter who your applicant is and have a standard criteria to keep everything both fair and legal.

You probably can also charge a larger than average security deposit to weed out the people with cashflow problems. Most states have a cap on amount of security deposit collected, I know here it is twice the monthly rent if under 60. Otherwise the cap is one month's rent.

Here's the rub: You usually gotta have a great place to rent that attract such tenants.

DISCLAIMER: I am not a landlord but I am considering becoming one. Yes, I FULLY know the risks, my parents were landlords for over a decade. So I know exactly what NOT to do as they only made pennies. My grandparents are also landlords and make plenty of money on their rental properties, so I have a positive model as well as a negative one. :)

You probably know this, but for the sake of anyone else reading, your home state probably offers a brochure on how to be a landlord, including what rights you must enforce. It's essential if you ever get a bad tenant. Plus, find a real estate lawyer to go over your lease and whom you can go to in trouble comes up.

Oh yes, I am aware. I would never dream of drafting up a lease without the assistance of a landlord/tenant lawyer.

My TOWN even has a whole book of additional rights for tenants/obligation for landlords in addition to national and state regulations.

Being a landlord is serious business.

... or your fixed costs increase.

Everytime I hear something like that I just suspect the tenant to be a drugdealer or something like that. Which is great since they're always so polite and respectful not to attract attention.

Thankfully he is retired military enjoying life in a quiet mountain village.

Got to be careful with drugs because the police can confiscate the house via asset forfeiture. One tenuous link between a drug dealing tenant and my bank account and the department has a new vacation home.

I hope my landlord appreciations my paying early as well. I always pay a week and a half to two weeks early, just because I've schedule my bills out for it to be that way.

Probably not though since I live in Brooklyn. :(

This is probably what my landlady's thinking too. She works as a tour guide somewhere in south-east Asia, is away 3/4th of the year, and has this quiet dude looking after her house and probably paying for her mortgage, :p. She didn't raise the rent last year since she's happy to have me. I wouldn't mind paying less though, it's kinda meh (old house, single room, etc)

Never hurts to ask. If they know you're a low-risk tenant, they might be able to reduce their margins accordingly.