The number of people renting rather than buying property around the country is on the rise for many reasons. This rise in renters means landlords can afford to be picky about their choices, so passing a tenant referencing fast and without any issues is a very important part of the process.

The tenant referencing process is a simple thing in itself, but you still need to know what your potential obstacles may be. In this guide, we will cover what you need to do to pass it with minimum bother:

Be Honest

Rather than having the letting agent or landlord find out any unpleasant information about you, it’s always better to be upfront about your issues and let them know what they need to know before they find out themselves. If there are some prior experiences you may have had with landlords that lead to poor references or a bad credit rating, then these will be the thing the new landlord will need to know.

Being honest from the beginning will let you approach the situation in a way that will give you an edge later on. Being upfront and sharing what happened shows integrity and a will to admit the truth. When the tenant reference check is conducted, landlords and letting agents will always prefer it when someone puts their cards on the table, saving them the time to research you and your personal history. Remember, they will likely find anything you’re hiding regarding tenancies, so being honest about things is the best policy.

Get Your Paperwork Together

This is often something people tend to get intimidated by during the referencing process. Though it may not necessarily stop you from passing the check, it will cost you valuable time if you don’t have the documents done beforehand. Competition for rented accommodation is stiff, so you will need every edge you can get. The paperwork will include references for renting, both for employers and previous or current landlords, passport and visa if required and bank statements. Having those on hand will make things go faster, letting you into your potential new property before other people who take longer to process their documentation.

Inform Your Referees

Many tenants will mistakenly believe that their landlords and letting agents won’t decide to call their referees. Don’t assume that, and remember that a good tenant referencing check will also include at least one call to the previous landlord and current employer of a potential tenant. Still, most letting agents and landlords will go about that far.

If your referees ask the landlord or letting agent to call them later, they may follow up on the call once or twice, but usually no more. You need to contact the people you named as referees, so they will know the call is essential.

Answer All Correspondence Promptly

Unresponsive referees may happen, but a tenant who avoids acting when prompted to respond is something else entirely. If you receive a request for information from the letting agent or landlord, you will answer them immediately, without any delays whatsoever. As part of the tenant referencing process, you are expected to fill out forms and complete certain boring tasks, but you would only harm your chances if you put off things later down the line. Get them done fast, and you will have a better chance of passing the tenant checks and getting the rental you want.

©Open Estates

A mixed bag, with the good outweighing the bad, but the weirdness was still noticeable enough to pull me out at times.

On one hand, I really enjoyed the prose, the banter between Mallett and Frant, the satirical edge in the characterisation, the mystery is solid and how in the end things are wrapped up in the end, in a surprisingly dark choice.

On the other, at times the pacing slows too much, to the point I found myself distracted and thinking of other things, and at least in this book Hare doesn't seem to have a deft touch for working in the satirical aspects. It might just be me, but while reading the first few chapters I had issues telling if the satire was supposed to be in the way the characters acted and spoke, of it the whole story was supposed to be a parody that just happened to have an investigative plot. Going further on in the book cleared up that doubt, but it was still slightly confusing.

Still, it was a very enjoyable read, and in the future I might pick up other books by Hare, if only because of the prose.

Well, it turns out RL kept me busy for much longer yesterday than I'd anticipated, so I really only got back to this book today.

That said, I truly enjoyed it -- even the fact that the murderer turned out to be the most obvious suspect, in the end, didn't bother me half as much as it had in An English Murder. 

The more books I read by Hare, the more I find I'm coming to him less for a fiendishly-constructed mystery -- none of the three books I've read so far was exactly that -- but for his wry humor and incisive observation of people and society.  As for Mike, his technique of cutting from one scene to another, chapter by chapter, works well for me; much better than a linear narrative.  I (too) could have done with some of the two investigators' speculations on motive, means and opportunity -- particularly at a moment where, as a reader, you had to have been sleepwalking through the book not to have clued in to the solution, at least in its very broad outlines -- but by and large, this was yet another enjoyable read, and I'm definitely looking forward to continuing to explore Hare's fiction.

This is one of those curious books that could have been remarkable but misses by enough to make it only competent in the end.

I think the problem is that Hare undervalues the things that he's good at and spends too much time on things he doesn't do well.

I like his subtle, wry, always present humour. I admire the way he can draw people with a few deft strokes, like a street portrait painter.

I find his way telling his story by cutting from scene to scene with minimal exposition to be very effective in a cinematic, surprisingly modern way.

The central conceit of the plot is clever and well displayed, giving me tantalising insights that kept me guessing but not enough insight to be right. 

Where the whole thing sinks like an under-baked sponge cake is in the back and forth between the Inspector and his underling. I gut the impression that Hare saw this as one of the better parts of the book, the thing that made it into a detective story of merit. ( I blame Conan Doyle for infecting detective stories with ideas like these), yet I found this endless theorising and capricious withholding of data and conclusions to be tedious, improbable and sometimes actually annoying.

There are also things where it is polite to say that the book is a product of its time - the inspectors acceptance of lavish hospitality from the brother of the Lord he is investigating, the use of the old school tie to attempt to protect the guilty, the dubious disposition of the killer's wealth - all of these things and Hare's unthinking acceptance of them made me grit my teeth. But then, that's how things were and how our current corrupt, incompetent, Eton-radicalised leaders would like it to be again. 

This was Hare's first novel, so I'm hoping that he learns to value his own talent more and puts aside the clumsy find-the-lady act in future novels.

What keeps me going with this book when it slips into pointless speculation is the humour, sewn like sequins into the fabric of the story.

Here*s one:

‘Old Mrs. Bradworthy was an institution in theatrical London. She had sat, a genial fat figure in black silk, at the back of her little shop, just round the corner from Drury Lane, longer than the most elderly ingénue actress could remember.*

 

The little barb at the actresses flashes in the light and is gone. These remarks are like a did-you-spot-that? game between author and reader. Nothing serious but all the more fun for that.