Verifying rental history
is an essential part of the
tenant screening process. Rental verifications
compliment credit and public records searches or background checks,
by:
- Detecting eviction
activity that may not yet have found its way into public records data or
onto the credit report (as a civil judgment).
- Revealing violations
of landlord rules and regulations that may not have risen to the level of an
eviction but are nevertheless important to you.
- Providing you with a
more complete view of the kind of resident the applicant has been and is
likely to be.
Logically, recent problems
are most likely to go undetected in the landlord screening. Done correctly,
rental verifications will reduce or eliminate the exposure.
Rental verifications
should:
- Be done consistently.
- Include pursuit of
undisclosed addresses found on credit reports – to determine whether they
are apartment communities. Search engines such as Google are useful for
this purpose. Consider asking the applicant about additional addresses
appearing on the credit report but not disclosed on the application to rent.
- Be sensitive to the
way the person answers the phone. It is most reassuring when the reference
answers with the name of the apartment community.
- Ask questions in ways
that confirm the veracity of the reference by testing their knowledge of
property management. Some examples are:
- Was the rental
agreement verbal or written?
- Was the agreement
a lease or month-to-month?
- Ask the same
questions of each reference – seeking fact versus opinion. For example:
- Number of
documented noise complaints?
- Number of
documented late payments?
- Move-in/move-out
dates?
- Etc?
Whether you do them
yourself or outsource the function to one of the many tenant screening services,
rental verifications are essential to the tenant screening process, managing
resident profile and a healthy bottom line.
Visit
Moco Incorporated or
MyScreeningReport.com®
for more information on this important topic.
MyScreeningReport.com®
is a service of Moco Incorporated.