Tenant Screening

Tenant screening is very important in the rental process. Renting to the wrong applicant can be a costly mistake. By taking prudent steps in evaluating your perspective renter you can get the right renter into your community/rental unit.

There are many ways to screen tenant's credit. You can order your reports online via the internet. Some companies will return the credit report in real-time (instantly) and some will email the results back to you. You can fax the application to a tenant screening company or apartment association and they will fax the results back to the landlord. Some tenant screening companies will allow the member to call in with the information on the new renter.

Of course, everything starts with getting a credit report on a prospective tenant. This can give you extensive information on their history of repaying loans. If they have a poor record of paying their bills, they might have a poor record of paying their rent! Not just credit cards appear on the credit report, also car loans, house payments and other types of loans. It will also list legal problems the tenant may have faced, like leins on their property or evictions

Sometimes the credit report can show evictions, but it's best to use a specialized eviction report to get the full story. This will give you the most thorough check on whether someone has a poor record of paying their rent, causing a landlord to have to go through a long painful eviction process.

These days, a criminal report is particularly important. Most landlords would like to avoid renting to people with a long rapsheet. But getting the story ahead of time can avoid a lot of trouble later on.

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