Tenant Verification: Be safe, not sorry

If you own a landed property, then you can easily make some easy money off it, by renting it out. This will provide you with a steady stream of income each month, without doing anything. However, you must always run a background check on your prospective tenants before you rent out your property to them. This will make sure that you don’t accidentally take in tenants with criminal backgrounds. Remember, you are renting out your property to an unknown person or family. You have no clue regarding what kind of people they really are.

That is not the only reason for conducting a background check on your prospective tenants. Even good people with clean criminal records may run into bad debts at some point in their lives. So, before taking in people like these as tenants, you should definitely get their credit reports checked to make sure that they can pay your rent every month without fail. True, if you find out later that they are unable to pay your rent, you always have the option of evicting them. However, it is a long and tedious process, with many possible complications. So, it is better to perform a financial credit check on your prospective tenants before renting out your property to them. There is less chance of complications that way.

It is best to consult accredited agencies for running the background check on your prospective tenants. These agencies can perform a thorough investigation based on the guidelines prescribed in Fair Credit Reporting Act and Fair Housing Laws. However, there is one drawback of these laws. It is that some of these laws require the written consent of the tenants on whom you want to have the checks performed.

There are some points, on which agencies usually focus their search. These include the following:

1. Criminal background check – The agency can perform a criminal background check on your prospective tenants by consulting various Government-maintained records, such as, state and county criminal records, state eviction records, sex offender registers, etc., to find out whether the person has a history of committing any serious crimes. They will verify the authenticity of the information provided by the tenant, by using his/her social security number, driving license, etc. They will contact police stations to find out whether the prospective tenant has any record of any kind of criminal activities reported against him/ her.
2. Credit check – The agency will check bank statements and state records to find out whether the person has any unpaid debts, or history of bankruptcy. Based on this information, you will be able to determine whether the person would be able to pay his rent every month, without fail.

These background checks are required to ensure that you are renting your property only to a civilized person with a proper financial status. Perform a check on the background of your prospective tenant, to ensure complete peace of mind.