Apartment Trashed by Tenant

Sometimes, regardless of how responsive you are, you may have a tenant who is unwilling to recognize the logical and legal limitations of your role as landlord. What they decided to do about it is anyone’s guess; hopefully you leases to a decent and honest person. Did you? Did you conduct a background check to verify their employment, income, and or criminal history?

Sometime tenants will just trash your place. Like this guy in England from a Times UK article.

The landlord spents months trying to evict a tenant, and when he finally did, he found the place was vandalized to the tune of £20,000. That’s a big number to absorb when you are attempting to earn some passive income of your income property investments.

Is a sex offender living in one of your units? How do you know? You may be checking your tenants credit score and possible eviction history, but you should consider conducting criminal background checks as well.   By ordering even an Instant Nationwide Criminal Database search you can verify whether your prospective tenant is a registered sex offender.    In addition, criminal databases from around the country we also include access to 50 states sex offender registries.  

You can pass the cost of the criminal background check to the tenant, as part of the application process, including the credit report.

What happens if you do hire a sex offender or a criminal and something bad happens in your building or area?  According to an article in Habitat Magazine, if a landlord or Co-Op could have forseen that something bad happening by implementing a background screening system for all tenants, then they might be seen as negligent.  “The failure to check — in certain instances — may be negligent.”

Corra Group founders were recently interviewed by French News Cable channel CanalPlus, regarding background checks in the Film and Television industry, specifically about Ryan Jenkins and running background checks on Reality Television industry contestants. The interview is overdubbed in French, but you can hear what’s going on underneath.

Gordon Basichis, Co-Founder of Corra Group, just wrote a new book called “The Guys Who Spied for China”, about the interesting world of international espionage. 

Click here to learn more about this interview

About the Author:

Basichis is also co-founder of Corra, which as the Corra Group specializes
in pre-employment and corporate research and investigation. In addition to his books, Basichis has written Breach of Trust/​Crash, a feature film, and has co-written several television series pilots. He co-created and served as Executive Producer on the forthcoming Showtime mini-series Land of Dreams. He was the co-producer of an ABC Television Network series pilot, and the
producer-director of Jerry, One Man’s Triumph, a video documentary about the nation’s first jailhouse lawyer. He has worked as an investigative
journalist and researcher, and in advertising, marketing and public
relations.

According to a recent article on Fox, property owners in Memphis, Tennessee are watching their neighborhoods turn to blight as the properties around them fall into disrepair, become abandoned with overgrown lawns and attract squatters and criminal activity.  Some property owners say that the property maintenance is the responsibility of the tenants.   Dr. Phyllis Betts, the director of the “Center for Community Building and Neighborhood Action” suggested tenant screening as a solution to reducing neighborhood blight.   Conducting background checks on your tenants will provide you with a portrait of your prospective tenants past behavior including criminal activity and financial responsibility.   Running an eviction search can give you enough information to determine if you want to risk having a tenant in your property who has already failed to pay back a previous property owner.  

The trouble in this recesssion is that even people with good credit are having a hard time paying their bills.   A credit report is only as good as the moment it was taken.  Insisting on proof of employment is a valuable way to make sure you tenant can at least pay next months rent.  But what about four months from now? after your tenant has moved in.  Are you noticing signs of problems?  Have the checks been arriving later and later in the month?  Are you charging late fees?  Is your tenant dating their checks for later in the month?  Are you feeling squeezed?  It’s difficult to know the right thing to do.  Always adhere to the local, state, and nationals laws about housing.  It is worth maintaining a line of communication with your tenant.  Maintain accurate and current contact information for your tenant.  Should they decide to skip town without paying rent, contact information will assist with locating and collecting any judgments you obtain.

A recent article in HeraldNet discusses a rise in bad landlords in Everett.   Due to the recession,  landlords have had their work cut out for them.  Cash strapped tenants are paying rent late or not at all, damaging property and skipping town.  Landlords are finding it hard to maintain property safety and grounds keeping, clean water and perimeter security.   In a landlords haste to rent a property they may quickly install a new tenant in an apartment without conducting even a basic tenant background check, which can easily be down with a credit report, a nationwide criminal database search, and an eviction records search.   Additional research can include county criminal record searches in the county courthouses, as well as employment and income verification. 

Landlords need to realize they will save money in the long run by investing in tenant background checks.   A properly screened tenant is about as good a testament of future behavior is you can get.  You can’t always predict if someone is going to lose your job and get divorced and lose their source of income, but at least you will know that up to that point their credit has not been affected.  At least with a tenant like that, they will work with you to pay a rent.   You can avoid the repeat offenders with a simple credit report.

tenant screening
background checks

The examiner.com posted a recent article about the importance of background screening residential tenants.    The article talks about the importance of running tenant credit reports, conducting reference verifications, and screening for criminal history.    The author C arlos Cooper applies some common sense advice about evaluating the results of the background check report.  For example, credit history is an important determinant of your prospective tenant’s ability to pay, however, because of the current economic crisis, good credit doesn’t count for much if your tenant has recently lost their employment.    Conduct references from “landlord, employer, and banking institution”  While it is important to verify employment, be aware that employers may not provide an expansive portrait of your tenants character for fear of litigation.   They will verify dates of employment, employment status, title, which is really all you need.   Seek additional details from prior landlord.

Eviction Records
We would also add that checking for Eviction Records is an important aspect of tenant screening.  While anyone could be struck with hard luck during this economic crisis, be aware that a previous pattern of evictions shows how much respect your prospective tenant has for the contract you are about to sign.

eviction records
screening residential tenants
tenant credit reports

for more information, contact Tenantchecker.com

More communities and beginning to educate homeowners on property management.  According to the examiner.com, Sioux Falls Community education is offering several courses for home owners on various home improvement subjects. 

The courses begin in September and cover various aspects of home owning including first time home buying, windows, woodworking, radiant heat panels, and property management including a section on tenant screening.   The course includes information on city codes, relationships with tenants, and how to conduct tenant screening.

tenant screening
credit reports
sioux falls

Communities across the United States are starting to discuss the benefits of tenant screening, including how to conduct a tenant screening and how to follow the applicable state, local and federal laws.  Recently, Brainerd MN held a town hall meeting about tenant screening and this week they are getting to together to discuss it.  The original meeting occurred at the Police Department and was presented by the Police Chief.  Local residents received tips on how to collect information from prospective tenants, how to order a criminal background check, and how to read the background check report.  Most landlords and property managers are not criminal lawyers  and don’t know everything after criminal law terminology.  It’s great that the police chief sat down with the populace and explained how to read a background check report, including the difference between a misdemeanor and a felony, an infraction, as well as disposition information, including the difference between a  conviction and a deferral, or suspended imposition of sentence (or SIS)

Keep in my mind that screening a tenant screening report requires some analysis and evaluation of risk.   The paper version of someone might not match who they are: a DUI from ten years ago, doesn’t mean they are currently an alcoholic.  Look at the totality of the person, including conducting an employment verification and reference checks.

tenant screening
criminal background check
criminal terminology

More communities are providing forums to help landlords and property owners understand their rights and help them engage effectively with their tenants.  Champlin Minnesota is the newest community to encourage this behavior, which a forum that occurred on May 14th, the second annual landlord forum. 

In addition to discussing low interest loans for property repair, using the Internet to link potential tenants and landlords, they also discussed the important of Tenant Screening.  Large multi-occupancy housing complexes are their own communities and landlords are advised to effectively screen all tenants to protect their communities and their local housing reputation.  All it takes is one bad seed to destroy a neighborhood. Landlords can avoid most negligence lawsuits by conducting a tenant screening program that including credit history report, eviction records, criminal records search, as well as employment verification. 

Predicting future tenant behavior

While you cannot foretell the future, awareness of previous eviction records and horrible credit history are a red flag and shows you how your prospective tenant dealt with financial responsibility in the past.   Unless they have newly discovered financial responsibility and are seeking to turn their lives around, what evidence do you have that they will pay rent ever month and not damage the apartment?

background checks
tenant screening
eviction records