It wasn’t a good day to be a tenant or a landlord in Seoul, Korea.  A jobless man set fire to his apartment on the third floor of a five story studio apartment building.  The blaze damaged the building, injured seven people people and killed four.  The angry tenant apparently attacked fleeing tenants as they left the building.  100 residents fled the building and 11 were hospitalized.

As economic tensions mount, be aware of potential changes in your tenants behavior.  While your tenant and building security is top notch, and it is beyond the scope to know of a tenant’s potential for violence unless a documented violent behavior in the past has occurred.  If your tenant is arrested, if there is a police report or police called the building, make sure your security personnel write their own report documenting what happened.   You do not want to be held liable if what occurs could be construed as foreseeable.  Also, arguably, even if you could win the lawsuit, you don’t want to spend money and time on it.

Always conduct proper tenant screening to adopt a screening policy that include criminal records searches.   Better to be safe than sorry; and make sure that your tenant screening policy is consistent.

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Sometimes landlords and property managers can take a bite out of crime when they run criminal background checks on their prospective tenants.  In addition to running tenant credit reports for financial history, landlords are now running criminal records searches to make sure their tenants don’t have a history of violance or are currently out on an active warrant.  Not only can a tenant with a violent history open landlords to potential lawsuits from other victimized tenants, but tenants with active warrants have a habit of getting arrested and incarcerated, and not making their rent.   This can potentially lead to the costly and time consuming eviction process. 

Saving time and money with Tenant Screening
With a fast tenant screening program, you can run an instant credit report and a nationwide criminal database search and have the results returned instantly.  Further criminal research can require a county researcher, but the instant report is pretty effective in many states.

The importance of maintaining a safe living environment for your tenants cannot be stressed enough, specifically with regard to criminal activity.  According to Amerilawyer.com, “A landlord can be sued for failing to take at least minimal steps to alleviate the risk posed by a violent tenant, a Court has ruled.” The court action’s purpose was to clarify the term “heightened foreseeabillity” and the duty of the landlord to the tenants.  The case law indicates that the tenant had a previous history of intimidating behavior and brandishing a firearm at other tenants. 

To protect against these type of lawsuits, a landlord or property owner/manager should conduct a thorough inspection of their property and determine any environmental concerns that might breed crime, such as back alleys, dark corridors, lack of lighting, security guards or security cameras.   Consider whether your property needs a security guard or security camera.  Is the parking area safe?   Next review any criminal activity that has occurred on the premises and determine whether the same factors leading to this case could arise again.  Are the same tenants still living in the building?  Then, consider whether you can conduct an annual criminal background check on your tenants.  Depending on the laws of your jurisdiction, consider including such language in the body your initial tenant background check release form.   Keep your property safe from crime will limit and reduce any possible lawsuits filed against you for negligence.

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Make sure you check out your potential tenant’s criminal history before you offer them the apartment or your home.  An instant criminal database search is a fast way to protect yourself and other tenants  by finding out your renter’s criminal history.   You can go further and conduct hand pulled criminal record searches in the county courthouses where your renter has lived, but these searches can take two or three business days depending on the courthouse.  Some counties take even longer. 

When screening your tenants make sure “the investigation does not exceed the limits set by state and federal law.”  The Los Angeles Times recently listed some instruction for California landlords. 

Since a background check is considered to be a “consumer credit report,” it is governed by California Civil Code Section 1785.13. This statute prohibits screening agencies from using arrest records, indictments or misdemeanor complaints that did not result in convictions. This statute also prohibits the use of convictions that occurred more than seven years before the check.

Under the state and federal fair housing laws, the use of criminal screening, like any other type of screening, must be applied evenly, across-the-board rather than selectively based on certain profiles or stereotypes. 
 
 

 Los Angeles Times

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