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.

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

WLKY.com reports a full story about tenants finding rats in their apartment, complete with photographs of rats and rats droppings.  The tenants claim the problem started in January and they have been trying to resolve it with their landlords, but the problem is still ongoing. They claim the property manager didn’t take them seriously and has been unresponsive. 

The story highlights one of the dangers of not responding to tenant complaints: there is a strong possibility of negative publicity, especially in the down economy, for these types of stories to make the local publications. With the Internet, these local stories turn into nationwide awareness of your firm, in this case, Brookside Properties, in Nashville

We recommend getting out in front of these types of problems before the potential for negative attacks.   Take precautionary measures to ensure a safe living environment for your tenants.  Before winter, work with the utility companies to check out heating equipment and minimize breakdowns.  It will save you money in the long run.  Your tenants will love you, and pay rent faster, stay longer, and recommend your building.

tenant screening
tenant problems

The city of Peoria is looking to instate of $25 annual fee for all landlords to “keep an up-to-date annual registration list. That includes names, addresses and phone numbers of all landlords.”

Currently Landlords are required to register one time, and the city council has the list and outdated. The purpose of the updated information appears to be a step towards regulating a part of town that is blighted by “Furniture sticking out of doorways, broken windows and peeling paint are not uncommon sights along the 1800 block of Martin Street.”

There’s an ordinance, that says city inspectors are supposed to inspection rental properties once every three years, but this is not happening, and they are relying on “initial landlord-tenant screening as a more up-to-date assessment of a rental property’s condition.”

Interesting that the city is relying on the landlords tenant screening program to assess the property’s condition.  The tenant screening solution should cover the criminal history, credit history, eviction history and possible employment history of the potential tenant.   The landlords should also be instituted a complex wide safety measure to reduce and eliminate crime.  Measures such as security guards (where appropriate) video cameras, and landlord walkthroughs can minimize this type of blight.  But a screening program can’t always check for the safety of the building, or the trash or abandoned furniture.  Landlords must get out in front of these problems before the problem escalates and reaches the local newspapers.  Public Relations is an preventative measure as well as crisis management.

tenant screening

background checks

Peoria tenant screening

the TimesDaily.com had an article from Sheffield, Alabama today about an apartment complex owner responding to complaints about his tenants alleged drug use, shots being fired and other incidents that occurred at his complex, the Colbert Square Apartments, over the past nine years.  The owner was forced to appear before the city council to address the complaints. 

In response to residents’ complaints, the city will forward (the owner) reports of serious incidents so he can follow through with the tenants, including evicting them if necessary. 

More than ever we are seeing communities starting to crack down on apartment complexes that seem to have a large amount of police responses.   While the efforts of the community to reduce crime are noble, it seems possible that some apartment complex owners could be scapegoated based on one or two problem tenants.  The lesson here is to avoid becoming the scapegoat bad apartment owner no matter what the actual facts are. 

Don’t want until the city council calls to you respond to complaints.  Make moves now to shore up your public relations by implementing and enforcing an effective tenant screening program that not only includes credit history checks but also a criminal history search and employment verification.  Make your efforts visible and clear to the surrounding community.  If necessary, hire security guards or install cameras to monitor activity in potential problem areas, like the parking lot, stairwells, and anywhere tenants will likely loiter.  Publicize your efforts and your community public relations will improve.  You might even be rewarded for your efforts to clean up the community.   

tenant screening
credit history reports
public relations
criminal records

Increasingly, property managers and landlords are including tenant screening as a sound business step in their overall property management business.  In these tough economic times, their have been a lot of tips for landlords, and they all seem to include some form of tenant screening.  The most recent is from National Association of Independent Landlords, which encourages landlords to continue with their safe and effective business practices despite the sour economy.  While it may seem expedient to hastily rent to the first availalbe tenant, they point out that ”An empty apartment is less expensive than a tenant who cannot pay and will not move.”

Tenant Screening
The association recommends both running credit history reports, criminal records searches, eviction records searches, and even verify the tenants employment and residential history. These type of searches are comprehensive tenant screening will help you avoid most problem tenants, and also avoid any negligence lawsuits should something violent happen on your premises. While criminal record searches are available in many ways, we recommend you confirm the tenants address history and check out the criminal history where they lived. Some nationwide criminal databases are more powerful in different areas, and lacking in some. Speak with your tenant screening company about the where the database searches are good, and where you may need to run a county criminal search at the court. The county criminal search takes more time, but will pull directly from the court records.

tenant screening
landlord tips
problem tenants

The Las-Cruces Sun News had an interesting article about a shooting death of a man at a trailer park, who was previously unknown to be a tenant there. 

“We did a full background check,” she said. “He had just gotten out of prison. That’s probably why (his girlfriend) kept it under wraps, because otherwise we probably wouldn’t have rented to him.”  “We didn’t give him authority to live there,” Albert Rodriguez said. 

He had apparently moved in with his girlfriend a few weeks before, unknown to the property management.  The girlfriend had rented the apartment and apparently passed the tenant screening; he had just gotten out of prison and would have been disqualified according to their tenant screening policy.  After several complaints of loud music, the male was shoot to death in the trailer. 

Property Managers are struggling with this all too frequent problem of shacking up with the significant other, especially if presents a danger to the residential community.  How can you monitor your tenants effectively to be aware of this potentially dangerous changes?  You could institute a policy regarding formal notification anyone staying over longer than say three days, but would any tenant effective follow the procedure.  Could you institute incentives and disincentives for not reporting?  How has time to monitor this behavior?  It could be case of Monday Morning Quarterbacking.  The trouble is for these property managers, they might be faced with a laced from other tenants for some perceived negligence.   Hopefully the property managers will come up with a successful and practice solution to this now know hole in the tenant screening process.

tenant screening
background checks
problem tenants
property management

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.

tenant screening
property management
criminal records

Tenant Representation Brokers across the country are taking on more advisory roles in the face of a tigher economy. They are increasingly helping their client find deals on real estate and managing the expenses involved in searching for commercial leasing, as well as build out construction.   Tenant Reps are helping with negotiating the lease of real estate with the building owners, and can help clients locate cheaper, more affordable office space in areas outside of a firm’s known area of operations.

There has been a significant amount of what I would call hand-holding and advisory services in guiding our tenants on the choices available should they need to make a decision,” said Marc Miller, executive vice president at Winoker Realty Company, a privately-held, mid-size commercial real estate management and leasing firm in Manhattan.

commercial real estate
tenant reps