If you are a landlord, one of your first priorities is to make sure your tenants pay the rent on time. Cash flow is important and a missed or late payment can hurt your bottom line. Secondly, you should make sure that they take care of your property. It costs time and money to repair any damages. However, it can be pretty difficult to monitor tenants especially if you have a busy schedule. Due to the current state of the economy, some tenants may also not be able to pay the rent on time. One of the best indicators if a tenant will pay on time is running aCredit Check for Landlords. It is also a good indicator if the tenant is responsible and won’t cause any damage.
You don’t have to worry about violating the law or the privacy of your applicants. According to the law, you have a right as a landlord to do a background check on your applicants. You can view their credit history, so you can determine whether they are qualified to rent your property. You may actually have them request their free annual credit reports themselves; but it is more ideal to request for the report on your own so you can make sure that the applicants do not cheat or alter their credit reports. They are entitled to view their credit report free once a year and if they don’t want to pay for a credit report they can get a copy of their free one and let you look at it.
Who Should Be On The Credit Report
Credit check for landlords entails finding out about the financial history and responsibility of prospective tenants. To do this, you should require all applicants to fill out application forms for renting. It does not matter whether your property is to be shared or not; each of the applicants need to fill out an application form. This means that couples and roommates are required to fill out separate application forms. Then, you should get their permission to check their credit report. You should never try to request for the credit report without the permission of the owner.
How To Do A Credit Check On A Tenant
The best way to run a credit check on your prospective tenant is from one of the online services. They are relatively cheap and you can include the cost of the service in the tenants application fee. One nice thing about some of the online services is that they offer other types of searches in addition to just checking credit histories. Some of them can perform background checks, criminal history searches and some might look at different databases to find out information on your tenant. Be aware that each service will cost you more money and you can decide how much information you need to know. Remember it is your property you are renting out and you want to protect it.
Back to how to do a credit check for landlords. When your tenant is filling out an application your will need some information so you can perform the credit check. You should get the full name of the applicant, at least two of his recent or previous addresses, his date of birth, and his Social Security number. You should request credit reports from at least one of the three major credit bureaus: Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion.
Once you have seen the credit reports of the applicants, you need to inform them whether or not they are qualified to rent your property. You can use their credit reports as basis on why you approved of them. Those with good credit reports are more likely to be accepted as tenants. Likewise, you can decline their application due to the information you saw on their credit reports. If you are not satisfied with what you found out, then you have a right to say no. Do not hesitate to speak to the applicants about their credit reports so they may have a chance to correct any wrong information on their file.
Source : creditcheckforlandlords
