Who should you choose to live in your property? We have all heard the horror stories of tenants who either destroy the property or fail to pay the rent. A bad tenant can be a nightmare for any landlord, both financially and emotionally draining. What can make you an empowered landlord? Well, making yourself aware of a tenant’s prior behavior, especially the criminal history, makes you a more informed landlord. After all, the future can be best predicted after observing the past. Background check is one of the most important aspects of the tenant screening. Therefore, tenant background checks should not be skipped at any cost, as they provide many benefits.
Here, we will outline the five reasons why landlords must require tenant background checks:
While thinking of who to rent to, you must think of it as who you are allowing in your community. It becomes your responsibility towards your community to choose tenants who don’t put anyone at risk of harm. You have to make sure that your tenant is responsible and not prone to rely on violence. Else, you will be putting yourself in hot waters.
It is very important for you to know that if you skip the background check for tenants; it will be you who will be liable if something goes wrong. Suppose you come to know that your perspective tenant has a history of shoplifting, you can easily reject because you have a genuine reason that your tenant could steal from other tenants in the building.
Tenant background check gives a clear message to the tenants and therefore, it discourages people from applying who want to hide some or the other things. If a tenant stops replying you, then stop taking up the latter’s follow-up. Might be the case that the tenant is trying to hide something and your sternness with respect to the background check discouraged them to proceed further.
You should ask your tenant whether he or she has any criminal history on your rental applications. Moreover, you should also specify what exactly you mean by criminal history. Your tenant must sign the rental application to verify that they told the truth. And you can use the background check to verify whether the tenant was truthful or not.
Now, that you are well apprised with the benefits of tenant background check, let us go over how they work and how accurate it pans out for you.