can't verify past landlord and current employer for applicant

[Neerav Patel]

Hi guys,

Thanks a lot for all of you to taking time to help.

I am a newbie landlord  and just had my first applicant for my newly renovated first property.

She looks great on paper. She has a good high paying job and everything else looks good.

I also called to employer and past landlord and also bought Rentprep(background check company) package where they call to verify employment and past landlord as well.

But problem is she just lived at one apartment complex for 7-8 years and when I called them 2 times and left message, I am not getting any callback. Rentprep also called them 3 times but no response.

For her employment, I talked to person applicant gave me a number on application. She did confirm that she works there but can't disclose more info and I have to call corporate number. When rentprep called corporate number, they said according to their policy, they can not disclose this information.( She did provided last 2 paystubs)

Any advice in this situation? Does any of you had this problem before? How did you navigate to it?

Any help is greatly appreciated. 

[Mitch Messer]

Hi @Neerav Patel. In my experience, apartment complexes are generally slow to respond to requests to verify rental history. It's a losing proposition from their perspective: If the tenant is halfway decent, they're likely going to lose them to you!

Given that, I make this the problem of the tenant. I encourage them to unleash their inner beast and to relentlessly pester the property manager until they take the 5 minutes required to complete and send over our Verification of Rent form. We've never had a serious prospect who wasn't able to get their complex to eventually get the required info over to us.