Different Ways To Screen A Tenant

By Author: Abhishek Sarswat
Total Articles: 43
Comment this article

While renting out properties, it is essential to check the background of your tenant. It helps in better maintenance and safety of your property. Tenant verification by police involves a background check which red flags any applicants with prior charges, rap sheet and sounds you off. If you live out of state or abroad, police verification for tenants is a necessary measure to ensure safety concerns you may have since you’d have no eyes and ears on the ground. If the tenants have undergone police verification, they know they can’t get away with any wrong doing. This will reduce misdemeanors, damaging property or engaging in illegal activities. There are different ways to complete tenant verification, that is ways in which you can screen a tenant.

1)Employment check
The most important piece is to verify employment. Many screening companies make it difficult to do this. The hassle and the cost stop many landlords from doing employment verification. If you want to do it yourself, you can check the bank statements and whether the person is filing his tax returns. But don’t get fooled by fake pay checks or tax files ...
... or bank statements. It’s easy to download these templates online and forge documents now. So look out for fake documents and suspicious people or any kind of fraudulence. If you are worried about the hassle and fraud risk, a good way is to contact an employee background screening company for employment/income verification and these companies will have all latest technologies required for tenant verification as they conduct employee background verification for many companies. DEWII is an employment screening company you can contact if you are facing any issues in tenant verification. They will screen tenants for you in simplest way possible within an affordable budget.

2)Credit report check
The use of a credit report is another excellent method to see if someone is responsible with their personal finance. But people with perfect credit can qualify for a loan and may not be a long term renter. Or more likely you might not find that person with good credit score who wants to rent your home. There is also a large group of people that went through a foreclosure or short-sale and their credit scores are bad but do not have any other debts. It is best to look through the full credit report instead of the pure score.

3)Criminal history check
This is the most important part as terrorists and criminals can be identified and frauds can be filtered out by checking criminal history. It is better to approach police or a background check company for criminal record checking. Also, be mindful that a person with no criminal past is not a sufficient indicator of good tenant, so always use it as a supplemental check. You can only check the criminal past of the tenant, you can’t be sure they won’t commit any crimes in future starting from now.

4)Eviction report check
An eviction is also important for a landlord while screening a tenant. Someone who have been evicted many times is not a good tenant from landlord’s perspective. You need to stay away from people who create nuisances. You can approach a background checking company for easily obtaining eviction reports too.

5)Landlord reference check
Never check with the current landlord as they might say good things about the tenant in order to get rid of them. Checking with previous landlords and not the current landlord is the right and reliable way to screen tenants.

6)Visit their current living place
If you are a landlord who can visit the current living place of the tenant, then it is well and good. You can check the way they are keeping the current property and check whether they are trashing this property. But you have to make proper excuses in doing this, otherwise it is an intrusion in their privacy. This way is not possible for landlords who are away from the property, for example, for those who are living out of state or country.

Abhishek Sarswat is a blogger cum writer who likes to speak about security and safety issues. In free time, he loves to eat and travel.