Many landlords encounter the same problems with their tenants. The person sounded so good on the application that there was no thinking about it. The new renter moves in and somehow it must be an evil twin. Nothing is as it appeared on the questionnaire; in fact, it is just the opposite. Tenant screening could have stopped this from occurring.
Being an informed landlord can make a successful landlord. No matter how good someone looks on paper, there is no way to verify some of the information without additional help. Checking a potential tenant’s references is one way to have peace of mind, but are these people reliable? Maybe they wanted to get rid of the new tenant and will say anything to do so.
As a landlord, one should always be assertive in choosing the appropriate candidate. Because dealing with a stranger is a gamble, why take it? Gathering accurate, reliable information should be a priority and tenant screening can be a great option to secure it. It is fast and easy and any extra effort put out to eliminate future problems is beneficial.
For a fee certain credit reporting agencies can access bank information, credit history and even criminal history data. The fees are minimal and in most cases, the access is instantaneous. There are also some free screening services that will provide less detail but critical just the same.
A landlord can take the word of the perspective tenant and hope that their pesky clone does not rear their nasty head or maybe go the extra mile and screen the tenant. The expense of a personal history far outweighs the cost of bad renters. The evil twin might be a lot of fun to hang out with but maybe not so much fun to live with!
photo credit: citta-vita