Screen NYC tenant for evictions now that evictions are not online

General Landlording & Rental Properties
7yFollow

Screen NYC tenant for evictions now that evictions are not online

Sheila Gonzalez
Oviedo, FL · Member since 2015 · 5 posts · 0 votes

Hi everyone,

I am about to list my apartment in Queens NYC.  I found out that you can no longer see evictions or eviction proceedings in the NYC court website anymore.  This is due to a change in the law to protect tenants (deadbeats) and the housing crisis.  I think I may still be able to check their records if I go to the court itself and personally do a check, but not sure if I'll be allowed to.  Also, its time consuming.  Does anyone know how to get this info?  Is there a service that will physically check the court records?  If not, is this something I can do?  Is it protected info?  Thank you for any input on this.  

0Reply
17 views

3 Replies

Jump to latestLatest
  • Jeff CopelandBusiness Member
    Real Estate Broker · Tampa Bay/St Petersburg, FL · Member since 2015 · 1k+ posts · 2k+ votes
    7y

    There are a number of tenant screening services that do this for you for about $15 to $25. (Transunion Smartmove is one example that comes to mind).

    There are a couple of problems with your approach:

    1. What if the applicant has evictions in other Cities/States? You really need a nationwide eviction/court records check to be thorough. Same goes for criminal records and credit check.

    2. Doing it yourself (even if you could do it online) is not effective or scalable. 

    Copeland Morgan LLC4.770 Reviews
    WebsiteView Page
    0Reply
  • Alex Furini
    Architect · Cary, NC · Member since 2018 · 96 posts · 63 votes
    7y

    I second @Jeff Copeland. Paying for a tenant screening from any of the companies he mentions is the best money you will spend. Personally I use Rentprep, but there are many many others out there. It will offer you peace of mind and dig much deeper than what you can find on your own. Background checks and credit checks in addition to the eviction search are pretty standard. 

    Best of luck

    Alex Furini, RA

    0Reply
  • Jason LeePro Member
    Real Estate Agent · New York, NY · Member since 2015 · 401 posts · 235 votes
    7y

    I've had prospective tenants use SmartMove and pay for it themselves. On top of that there are some other things you can do screen:

    Get a landlord reference and actually check it. Also verify the "landlord" owns the property.

    Get verification for several months of rent payments (bank statements, cancelled checks, etc) so you can see if they make timely payments.

    All this is going to be a lot easier than you taking the time to investigate each tenant yourself.

    0Reply
Join the conversationCreate a free account to reply, vote on answers and follow this thread.
Log InJoin for Free