Tenant Inspection Before Letting Your Property
♫ Friday, December 3rd, 2010Believe it or not, but some people will pay less attention to the identity and references of their tenants than they normally do before letting some plumber in to their house. Such negligence can have serious repercussions. At times, the tenant may turn out to be a guy with a criminal background (or even worse, someone associated with a terrorist outfit) or a plain bully, making it hard for you to collect monthly rent on time or increasing rent when it’s due. Needless to say, it’s quite hard to force these tenants to leave once you’ve let them in. On the other hand, something as simple as contacting the tenant’s previous landlords and inquiring about the tenant can save you from innumerable troubles in the future. However, that’s not the only check you need to perform, there are many others such as checking bankruptcy records, criminal record check, liens & judgments, credit history or checking in the list of registered sex offenders.
You can start from doing some verification from their previous landlords, employer or neighbors. Don’t write off this background screening process as being overly-vigilant, there’s nothing wrong in protecting you and your property from the troublemakers or miscreants of any kind. in a way that it accumulates all of the required information about the tenants including their identification, whereabouts, rental history, employment details and credit history. Do not start verifying the information for each of these applications though; you should only check those applicants that you have short listed.
Pay special attention to the person who doesn’t appear local, ask and verify for the reason of moving into that specific area. However, all of this verification or screening process should be carried out on non-discriminatory basis and solely for your own satisfaction. You should also inform the tenant that you will verify the information provided by them, remember there are various laws protecting the tenant’s rights. An honest tenant should have no issues with all of this screening; in fact the vigilance of landlord will leave a good impression on them. Do not set inflexible standards though, for example, you may not be ready to compromise on criminal background or incessantly bad credit history, however you can consider becoming a little lax on requisites like family size.






