Effective Tenant Screening For Landlords
When a family member passed away a few years ago I inherited an apartment building and suddenly found myself with a new career as a landlord. It is a great job gives me a nice steady income but there are a few downsides and I had to learn them as and when they happened.
You simply cannot trust everyone no matter how trustworthy they seem to be. Being a landlord, I not only had to protect my property, but also myself and my family and other renters.
By running a tenant background check you are certainly helping to protect both people and property. Before you rent to somebody it is definitely worth taking advantage of the many types of screening processes available online.
Personally I run a background check, a social security check and a tenant screening. I use MacDataAdvantage.com, it is a great website that provides me with all of the screening tools that I need.
A tenant background check is an important process before a rental agreement is signed. Personally I would not want a sex offender living in an apartment next to a family with young children. I also wouldnt want someone who had a history of destroying property.
A social security background check is very useful to check that you are renting to a person who is in the country legally. You could get yourself into all sorts of trouble if you are renting to someone who is not in the country legally.
Let me give you an example of when running a simple background check or tenant screening has helped me avoid what could have been a bad situation. Here I had a young couple who wanted to rent one of the apartments in my building. They looked good, the application that they filled out looked good and I was sure I was going to be happy with them.
Then I run the screenings and all the warm fuzzies I had with those two went right out the window. Not only did they have a history of nonpayment of their rent, they had forfeited their security/cleaning deposit twice before for breaking things in the home and for leaving things very dirty.
