Five Essential Tips on How to Do a Proper Tenant Background Check

 When you are a landlord, it is very important to have the right tenants, and you can find out if yours are the right ones only by

doing a tenant background check.

There are many signs which could warn you about problem tenants, but there are also a lot of times when everything seems perfect about your prospective tenants and you feel that a tenant background check isn’t necessary. You can see if it is indeed so by undertaking a tenant background check. Here are five tips about what you need to do when you are carrying out a tenant background check.

  1. Ask your potential tenants to fill out

an application with relevant data for a tenant background check.

Make sure the application asks for at least the following information: full name; social security number; current address; time at current address; current landlord’s name and phone number; employer; employer’s contact number; their income; every address they resided at during the last 3 years, with landlords names and numbers; full name of every person to occupy or share the rental. Keep in mind that the application must include a signed authorization allowing you to do a complete tenant background check on all applicants.

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 2. Check the driver’s license and state ID of all applicants aged 18 or over.

Before starting the tenant background check,

make sure the pictures on the documents match the persons who have handed them to you. Then, look at the full name, including middle initial. Compare the social security number and the signature on the ID with the ones on the application.

 3. Check their eviction, criminal and arrest records. Provided your prospective tenants are from the same county or state as yourself, you can go to the local courthouse and find out if they have ever been evicted by

doing a tenant background check through the eviction records.

While you are there, make sure you also perform a tenant background check on the criminal records. Then, go the police station and continue your tenant background check by pulling arrest records on your applicants. As many arrests never make it to court, this is one of the most important steps of your tenant background check.

 4. Contact previous landlords.

For an effective tenant background check,

you need to go to the tax office and pull property records on the addresses listed in your application. Make sure the owners are the same, then contact each of them and run a tenant background check by asking them specific questions.

 5. Check their credit report. Go to the credit bureau and

run a tenant background check by going through their credit report.

You may not consider non-payment of medical bills a bad sign in your tenant background check. However, bad checks to jewelry stores are a major red flag on any tenant background check.

 Commonly, you can do the entire tenant background check process online

Consider charging the applicants a reasonable nonrefundable fee as an application fee. Then, turn to a respectable screening service like www.BackgroundSearch.com for a professional tenant background check and you will know who you are dealing with almost instantly. Or, if you decide to do the tenant background check yourself, the application fee will cover part of the labor time that you put into it.