Professional Tenants Thwarted - One for the 'good guys'!

[Rick Bassett]

We were able to ferret out a family of Professional Tenants yesterday after picking up on few 'red flags' on their applications. 

The short story: They seemed very nice, applications looked reasonably strong with respect to employment, income and they had a compelling story. They were looking for a place to rent as their house, which they'd been in for 6+ years, is on the market under short sale. They  had an old previous rental 7 years ago with very vague landlord info provided on their app and mentioned that they left it as it had mold. 

They claimed no previous evictions, which later proved to be untrue.

With 20 mins of searching I located their old landlord through Google who opened our conversation with the line "I don't know how you found me but by the end of this call you will be glad that you did". He went on for about 10 mins detailing the non-payment of rent, property damages and the lawsuit  that these tenants launched against him for their 'claim' of mold. 6 years later and this poor guy is fighting these previous tenants in court after incurring thousands in lost rent, damages and legal fees. 

I don't usually dig back 7 years but in this case I'm glad that I did.

I am extremely grateful that we dodged the bullet by uncovering this hidden past. It took an extra 1/2 hour but I could only envision the what the downside would've been if we allowed these Professional Tenants into our beautiful rental house.