Five Essential Tips on How to Do a Proper Tenant Background Search
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 Search.
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 Search isn’t necessary. You can see if it is indeed so by undertaking a tenant Background Search. Here are five tips about what you need to do when you are carrying out a tenant Background Search.
1. Ask your potential tenants to fill out
an application with relevant data for a tenant Background Search.
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 Search 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 Search,
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 Search through the eviction records.
While you are there, make sure you also perform a tenant Background Search on the criminal records. Then, go the police station and continue your tenant Background Search 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 Search.
4. Contact previous landlords.
For an effective tenant Background Search,
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 Search by asking them specific questions.
5. Check their credit report. Go to the credit bureau and
run a tenant Background Search by going through their credit report.
You may not consider non-payment of medical bills a bad sign in your tenant Background Search. However, bad checks to jewelry stores are a major red flag on any tenant Background Search.
Commonly, you can do the entire tenant Background Search 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 Search and you will know who you are dealing with almost instantly. Or, if you decide to do the tenant Background Search yourself, the application fee will cover part of the labor time that you put into it.
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