Orland Park, IL · Member since 2017 · 12 posts · 3 votes
I have an older gentleman and woman that want to rent my single-family home. They put down one dog on the application. When I checked on their Facebook I found that they have three dogs so they lied about two of them, one of the 3 is a pitbull. These people had a disaster happen to their house so have no rental history. I tried to do background screening and because they told all the credit bureaus to block everything due to compromised personal information during the disaster I can't get any credit report or other screening information. They offered to pay the entire year in advance but they have two more dogs than they have told me about. Any recommendations would sure be appreciated ASAP. Thanks
I was in the exact same position so I said it is ok, I will need 2 months of paycheck stubs, but then they told me they were self-employed and they owned and it work most off of cash. I said no problem I just need 2 maybe 3 years of tax returns. What that gives you is there address that they were living at if it was an apt check with them if it was a house search for the owner and call them up and listen to the stories they have to tell. I caught several that way
There is a high possibility they are scammers but there is an easy way to mitigate your risk:
Simply have them temporarily unblock the credit bureaus and have them pay for the screening fee. If they pass that portion, then you can confront them about the extra dogs and ask for more rent for the additional dogs and a higher security deposit because more pets = more property damage.
If you do rent to them, an important note is that many insurance companies don't cover pets like pitbulls when it comes to lawsuits so make sure you are aware of the specific laws in your city/state when it comes to high risk pets.
You should be extra cautious in this situation but just because many signs are red flags, doesn't mean 100% these people are scammers. There is a high likelihood they are but a few simple risk reduction actions and you can check whether their sob story is real or not.
Everyone, Thank you for your feedback. I did more research on the assessor's office and other background research and decided to move on and deny the person. Thanks for looking out for me:)
I'm very glad you made this decision. May I suggest that you make a rule for yourself? Lying on an application means denial. No exceptions. Tenants are on their best behavior when applying for a unit. If they lie at their best . . . .
Just wanted to update everyone on what happened with this. After delving deeper into the tenants information provided and credit, things changed. Prior to a car running into their building and destroying their home they did have 3 dogs. I found out later that one dog had to be put down and the other was older and they left this dog at his mom's house, so they actually only brought 1 pet into the home. They manually requested a hard copy of the credit report - scored acceptable at over 700. Because total income was not enough they agreed to pay 100% of the 1 year rent up front. Lease was signed and it looks like they will be great tenants. Moral of the story, delve as deep as possible and get all the facts, you might be pleasantly surprised at the outcome :)