Tenant Screening - Criminal Background Checks

While most people try to be as honest as possible, there are some that are not so honest and this is often one of the biggest problems private landlords face. When you are carrying out tenant screening, criminal background checks are essential to make sure your prospective tenants are exactly who they say they are.


First impressions count to some degree particularly if you get a bad feeling abot someone but feelings are not a basis for profitably running your property investment business nor are they grounds for rejecting an applicant. You need facts to base your decisions on, so when carrying out tenant screening, criminal background checks on your potential renters are essential.

Tenant Screening - Criminal Background Check

A criminal background check is a check for any kind of criminal activity that a tenant may have, current, recent, or even in the distant past. Depending on the age of the person the check may go back ten years or more.

Criminal background checks should be a search across all law enforcement databases, local, state as well as federal agencies. One of the only drawbacks to these checks is that if there is any recent activity, it may not be included in the report for a certain period of time.

When conducting your tenant screening, criminal background checks should include both misdemeanor and felony activities.

While no one is perfect, as a landlord you really have to assess the suitabaliity of your tenants before letting your property to them based on the checks that you carry out.

Past behavior is often a strong indication of future behavior.

The time frame of these activities are another thing to consider. If any of these happened years or decades ago, you might consider that it happened when the tenant was young and irresponsible, but any recent incidents, or repeated offenses, could certainly be grounds for rejecting an applicant.

When you are carrying out your tenant screening, not all criminal background checks are the same, and you have to be very careful when trying to find the right website or company to perform the checks for you. Almost all checking companies will let someone do an 'instant' criminal check, but these are not that accurate, and in order to do a full check you often have to pay money.

In the tenant screening activity finding the right service is one of the areas where you really have to do some research. Another area is the amount of details that are available. You need to find a screening site that provides comprehensive cover across all the different criminal reporting agencies, not just one or two.

If you are a private landlord, even if you only have one or two rental properties, you still need to do checks each time your have a new tenant.

If you are comparatively new to being a private landlord, then you need to understand that criminal background checks are just one aspect of tenant screening. Tenant screening is something you have to get right to ensure you only get the tenants that will pay on time and care for your property.

When carrying outtenant screening, criminal background checks are just one part of the wealth of advice you can get from "Find And Keep Great Tenants" from Private Landlord check it out at http://privatelandlord.org