Don't put too much weight on personal opinion when screening tenants.

When screening tenants, listen to personal opinion from agents and especially private landlords but always confirm with facts.

Ask for a tenant ledger – this is a printout from a property managers trust account entries that shows exactly when the payments have been made.

Trust account entries are audited every year and more reliable than personal opinion.

Similarly ask for a copy of the routine inspections and this will show you the tenants living standards – this is again more reliable than somebody telling you that the tenant is very clean or very dirty – quantify exactly what that means but looking at facts.

Last year a private landlord told us to reject an application from a tenant because she damaged her $23,000 kitchen, The application was for an executive house in the $600 a week range we asked the landlord to send us pictures of the damage that was done.

At the end it turned out that the writing around the knobs of the hotplate came off when the tenant cleaned it.

That was all the damage that was done – our landlord was okay with this and we offered the tenant a lease.

Moving forward 12 months all routine inspections have been fantastic and payments have been on time for this tenant.

Had we rejected that application based on the referring landlords dramatic personal opinion we would have caused our landlord vacancies and missed out on a good tenant.