Avoid Expensive Litigation with Effective Tenant Screening

By now, you would think that undesirable rental applicants would have a really hard time finding a place to live considering the incredible service and information that we have to offer our clients when it comes to obtaining a comprehensive background information about your potential rental applicants.  Prospective tenants have learned that they can basically pick and choose where they want to live by finding unsuspecting landlords who are gullible enough to believe their lies and not recognize their phony front.  Those landlords who do not conduct thorough tenant screening are setting themselves up for a potential disaster.

What is even more amazing is that landlords don’t even have to pay for this information if they ask their rental applicants to fund the tenant background check report.  Many of our clients have their potential tenants pay for a background check so they can validate their potential tenant’s identity and make a determination that there are no issues from the past that could easily recur in the future. This is especially true when an applicant has a history of criminal records, evictions, and money judgments.  There are plenty of rental applicants available today who don’t have any of these issues, even though they may have filed bankruptcy recently in the past several years.

Any rental applicant that is unwilling to sign a rental application and undergo an extensive background check will normally have a reason to hide something from their past and this is definitely not a good sign.  Also, be alert for any rental applicants that come to you and are in a big huge hurry to sign a lease with you. This is often a red flag to let you know that this person wants to get your approval before you have time to conduct a thorough background investigation on this individual.

Accepting undesirable tenants can often cost you hundreds if not thousands of dollars in litigation expenses as well as lost income. Consider this, how much further ahead would you been had he just accepted the right tenant and not had to throw all this money out plus miss out on the rental income you should reap as a landlord?