What Should a Landlord Look For in a Tenant Background Check?
There are dozens of options available when it comes to tenant background checks. But if you’re an independent landlord, it’s vital to understand what’s essential for your property and what’s not. You naturally want to avoid overspending and in turn narrowing your profit margin, but you also don’t want to miss vital information that could affect you down the line. Understanding the various forms of Tenant Screening and background checks lets you make a safer, more informed decision about which information you need and which you don’t.
Identity Verification and Credit Check
The most important item to check is a tenant’s credit history. This will confirm that the social security number the applicant provided is in fact valid, and that it’s not associated with someone who is deceased, which is a type of synthetic fraud.
A credit check also identifies aliases and previous addresses that are associated with an applicant. While this information alone may not help you decide if you should rent to someone, it can give you a more complete look at a candidate’s history.
Tenant Credit Reports
Most of us are familiar with credit checks. In the rental industry, they allow landlords to investigate an applicant’s financial history and will help you decide a renter’s potential risk level. A Credit Report typically covers liens, previous bankruptcies, and collections. A Credit Report from CreditLink will also show you the renter’s pattern of payments on certain open lines of credit.
It’s a basic and important check that can identify factors that may affect whether you chose to rent to the applicant or not. The higher the score and more consistent their payments, the more likely a person is to pay rent in full and on time. It will also help you to discuss with your potential tenant whether they are able to manage their payments and their credit responsibilities.
Criminal Background and Eviction Search
For further peace of mind, many landlords and property managers choose to seek out the Eviction history or potential Criminal Background of their prospective tenants. Whether to verify information willfully provided, or to preemptively safeguard their community and property, these additional reports are a reliable addition to the DIY Landlord’s safety net.
CreditLink's Criminal Background search combines results of extensive searches through 46 state criminal databases (excluding: Delaware, Massachusetts, South Dakota, Wyoming) as well as Nationwide Sex Offender, Most Wanted, Federal Drug Enforcement, and many more.
Perhaps most telling and useful to landlords, however, can be an Eviction history report. CreditLink's National Eviction Search searches the public eviction records in all 50 states plus Washington D.C. and provides you with any judgements, warrants, a case information available. Processing an eviction can be a lengthy and costly process. CreditLink is here to help ensure that you avoid the risk of needing to evict by providing the information necessary to choose the right tenants for your properties.
Which Report is Right for Me?
While other companies will have you pay to add-on additional reports to the Credit Report, CreditLink provides you with all three screening reports for free. CreditLink's Tenant Screening is "Tenant Pay"; meaning your applicant will pay a small fee to process the reports, and all three reports will be released to you. You can get the whole picture on your tenant's credit and background history, without any additional cost or stressors to you.
Choose CreditLink for Your Tenant Screening Needs. Create an account and get started with CreditLink today!