Tenant Screening

A pre-rental investigation, known colloquially as tenant screening, is a process of information gathering and evaluation by which a rental applicant is subject to in-depth scrutiny, to assist a landlord in determining eligibility for tenancy. At a bare-minimum, tenant screening should include a completed rental application without omissions, a tenant credit report, a background report, a criminal report and an eviction report. A landlord must take great care in either establishing a thorough step-by-step approach to screening potential tenants, or hire a competent well-established service provider to handle it. The independent real estate investor should refrain from relying upon a real estate broker, salesperson, building superintendent, or current tenant, to perform all or part of the tenant screening process.

The owner of TenantReports.com has personally investigated far too many cases in which landlords relied upon the aforementioned individuals, to their detriment. Although the vast majority of licensed real estate brokers and salespersons are honest, some view their profession as nothing more than an advantageous position from which to steal. Endless horror stories exist in which they have placed friends or associates with poor credit and/or criminal records into apartments, by submitting doctored or fictitious tenant credit reports and employment information to unsuspecting landlords. A few have even gone so far as to engage in identity fraud towards that end. By the time the multiple landlords they have victimized figure out their game, and seek redress through the courts, these con-artists have already collected their commissions, closed shop, and abandoned their respective licenses. Likewise, building superintendents and other tenants are notorious for accepting kickbacks from rental applicants to bypass the screening process and facilitate approval of a pending application.