{"id":88348,"date":"2017-05-01T14:30:29","date_gmt":"2017-05-01T20:30:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/renewsblog\/?p=88348"},"modified":"2021-03-16T12:25:06","modified_gmt":"2021-03-16T18:25:06","slug":"tenant-background-credit-checks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/tenant-background-credit-checks","title":{"rendered":"6 Things Every Landlord Should Do With Tenant Background & Credit Checks"},"content":{"rendered":"

After you have the results from your background and credit check, you need to decide what exactly to do with that information.<\/p>\n

6 Things You\u00a0Should Do With Tenant Background & Credit Checks<\/h2>\n

1. Confirm they are who they say.<\/h3>\n

If they are listed as deceased or the Social Security number pulls up another individual\u2019s name, you can probably say bye-bye.<\/p>\n

2. Confirm the addresses on their background check coincide with the ones they listed on their application.<\/h3>\n

If there are any discrepancies, you will want to make a note of that and ask the applicant about the addresses in question. Most likely the response will be something like, \u201cOh, I forgot.\u201d It is especially important to talk to the landlords the applicant tried to hide from you.<\/p>\n

\"work-from-home\"<\/p>\n

Related:<\/strong> Should Landlords Run Background Checks on Prospective Tenants?<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

3. Look for any criminal convictions.<\/h3>\n

If there are any, you will need to decide if that criminal conviction makes the tenant a less likely candidate.<\/p>\n

4. Look for any evictions.<\/h3>\n

5. Look for any judgments or liens.<\/h3>\n

If the tenant has a judgment on their background check and you will be denying them because of it, one way to respond to the applicant is by putting the ball in their court. \u201cHey John, your background check revealed a judgment owed to Property USA, LLC in the amount of $4,200. What can you tell me about that?\u201d Likely, they\u2019ll give you an excuse of some kind, but don\u2019t buy into it. Instead, ask them to have the company in question get in touch with you, but you will need to put their application on hold until you hear from them. Don\u2019t worry, you never will.<\/p>\n

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\nRelated:<\/strong> Are You OVER-Screening Tenants? How Background Checks & Credit Scores Can Fail<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

6. Finally, make sure they meet your credit requirement.<\/h3>\n

If the applicant meets your minimum standards for qualification in\u00a0their background and credit check, you can move forward with the next step of processing the application by getting rental references.<\/p>\n

[This article is an excerpt from Brandon Turner’s The Book on Managing Rental Properties<\/a>.]<\/em><\/p>\n

Landlords: Do you verify\u00a0anything else when it comes to tenant background and credit checks?<\/em><\/p>\n

Leave your comments below!<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After you have the results from your background and credit check, you need to decide what exactly to do with that information.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":710,"featured_media":88349,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5183],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-88348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-landlording"],"acf":[],"comment_count":0,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/710"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}