I know everyone’s process for getting lease verifications back from a property is different. My process that I have found to be pretty effective is:
- You call the property, one, to verify the information on the verification and that the client is approved, but also to get the email address of the person who handles the lease verification in their office.
- Send over the lease verification via email, Docusign or another electronic signature service is going to get the best results because the person at the property is more likely to click a button to sign than print off, manually sign, scan, and email back.
- Sending the verification in the morning will also improve the likeliness of getting it back quickly. This is because the on-site staff have less people coming into the office in the mornings.
- Follow up and ask them to fill it out and return it if you don’t get a quick response. I would check in later that same day to make sure they received it. (They may need to check spam if they did not.)
- Wait two days and if you have not received it back, you call again. I would do this until I have received it back. I do understand that sometimes you have to send a lease verification multiple times to the property in order to even get them to look at it. Always call the property to double check that they’ve gotten it!
These people’s emails are flooded with hundreds and hundreds of emails every single day. So, if you do not call them to get their attention to get them to look it up. Chances are that they’re not going to see it.
Now I may be wrong about some of the properties that we work with that stay on top of their emails and respond very quickly. Sometimes the email goes to spam, and they have to dig it out.
Remember, if you don’t want to do this part, here at Spirit Real Estate Group, agents have access to a lease verification service for a small fee. We will retrieve the lease verification for you so you don’t have to.
Why is a lease verification needed?
The bottom line is this, at least verification is a commission agreement between your brokerage and the property stating that you’re going to get paid. Without it, it will be exceedingly difficult to collect your commission without the signed commission agreement from a property that decides to push back on paying the commission.
Another added benefit of a lease verification is that when you were not properly listed by your client. Often times if you catch it early enough, the property will let your client fix the application. This information will not be received until much later when the invoice is sent if you have not tried to verify the lease.
And yet another benefit is that your invoicing team is likely to have the correct information when they send over the invoice the first time if it was already verified. If the invoice is sent with incorrect information the property may choose to ignore it or not process it until the corrected invoice is sent over. In either case you’re delaying when you get paid.
Lease Verifications are not necessarily the fun part of your job as a locator. Your job is to do what you do best and help people find new homes. However, if you miss out on commissions that you worked hard for, it makes all the work you did before pointless, and will discourage your future efforts in growing your locating business.
