Today’s world, crime affecting directly to landlord this all time high and landlords need to feel they can trust the person they are pass on the keys to them. There has been a extraordinary increase in tenant fraud, involving property damage, unpaid monthly payments, criminal activity. Tenant screening with proper tenant background check is an necessary endeavor to ensure the correct identity and record of the renter. Prospective screening involves many different steps, which will be describe below.
1. Sufficient identification from the tenant. First step is first round screening try to match the entries on the rental application for verification. Names, addresses, social security numbers should match and double checked for accuracy. Needed identification includes license, birth certificates, or a valid US passport.
2. Needed the tenant to fill out an all-inclusive rental application. In the application you should include at name, address, contact numbers and salary and work information and bank information. Some necessary information should be credit history and directly related to their ability to make payments with their current salary and expenses. Potential renters should be able to list at least two references the landlord can contact for further verification. These things are necessary; the rest is up to jurisdiction of the landlord.
3. Get an accurate tenant background check. These checks will aware the landlord to a number of major issues that should raise red flags. A perfect background check will include previous criminal activity and sex offender status. It should also include arrests nationwide, not solely in the state of application.
These checks will also show history of employment, alias information and address. As previously, these fields should be double checked against the rental application to detect any possible errors or possible forgeries. This information could raise some red flags if certain fields are misrepresent or inaccurate.
4. Get a credit history is imperative and should be included with the background check. These reports will list the future tenant’s credit mishaps, bankruptcies and previous addresses. This information should be a help in take the decision.
Sometimes landlords neglect to run a background check due to the fees involved. It’s common in real estate market, if not mandatory practice to charge the renters the fee for the check in the rental application fee. All fees should be paid upfront and should cover all aspects of the process. Landlord is not responsible for these fees. If the renter complain then landlord should consider this a part of the screening process, and should seriously consider the character of this individual as a possible tenant.
You do not have to become a victim of tenant fraud if you carry out these necessary steps. This are not difficult to perform and they could potentially save your thousands of dollars and save time also. Now days it’s very hard to meet good renters, you don’t have to rely on your intuition. Tenant screening with proper tenant background checks will detail all of the information you need to make an educated and researched opinion in order to protect your property and your family.
Source: wizardlaw
