Often overlooked by private landlords, screening someone is a very important when choosing your new tenant. Assessing a tenant by a rental application and meeting alone may lead to loss due to property damage, unpaid rent, and even court costs for eviction procedures.
Screening Services; TransUnion Report | Background Check
Screening services allow you to know a person's identity, aliases, credit, criminal, eviction, bankruptcy, rental history, liens and judgments amongst other criteria.
It also allows you to verify the applicant's submitted information, such as previous addresses and current employment information. If what was submitted by application does not match what the report states, then clearly the prospective tenant is lying or hiding something.
Employment | Income Source Verification
Prospective tenants must provide proof of their income source whether it be pay statements, official bank statements or government statements/ letters.
Employer is contacted and prospective tenant's employment information submitted is verified. This is also a great opportunity to ask for a character reference on the prospective tenant as well.
Contacting Previous Landlords
We highly recommended that prospective tenants provide a current or last landlord as reference as this shows us that they are leaving their existing home on a good note.
Contacting Work/Volunteer Personal References
Personal references is anther great way to verify prospective tenants characters, It is an unreliable source though, as it is usually a relative or friend.
Work, volunteer or public related references work best in this scenario and will give more of a sense of who the prospective tenants are.
These are just some of the ways that we screen our tenants. Always be sure to do your research and save yourself the headache and expenses of a bad tenant!
If you are looking to have a potential tenant screened, contact us today!