Rental Background Checks - Don't Compromise on Credit or Criminal History

Rental background checks cover anything from rental history to credit history to possibly employment history and (hopefully NOT) criminal history. The point is that every prospective tenant has some sort of history (even if it's no background at all), and that as a property manager, you have to sort all of it out. One thing that most landlords do is a renter credit check.

This simple act digs just a little bit into the credit history of an applicant to determine what types of places they've lived and whether they were able to maintain a landlord tenant credit arrangement for more than one lease. I figure if a tenant got through year one and into year two with one landlord they must have paid often enough to get renewed. I can't always rely on tenants and applicants to provide the right contact information on places they've lived so I make sure to get consent for a landlord tenant credit check. Doing that ensures I can verify the information the applicant has provided quickly and get to the business of filling my empty unit(s).

If I have a ton of applicants (I advertise constantly whether I have vacancies or not) I my cheap tenant screening service first to weed out the applicants that can't spell their name right or have wrong contact or SSN information. Hey, if you can't fill out an application correctly... are my other tenants going to be impressed with me for letting you in? I think not. I digress. When I get down to the dirty work of picking between one or two renters I go for the one who scores best on their renter credit check.