Rental Property Investor · Minneapolis, MN · Member since 2019 · 85 posts · 22 votes
Ready to rent and has received a few applications. Nightmare comes when we try to screen criminal /credit /eviction. We tried verticalrent.com and Mysmartmove.com. They both require tenant to fill in information themselves, and when doing detailed record verticalrent required is to pay and the tenant to pay as well. What do you use to screen and is it possible to put in all the info without tenant doing it themselves? Thanks!
My wife and I are local landlords in our area. We do mysmartmove.com, too, and we pay. But that's a last check for us, to catch things out-of-state that we might have missed, and to get a credit check. Our first check is our county's criminal and civil records and our state's unified records system.
If you're going to be local, there's very little comparison between being able to look at the actual court documents versus getting some kind of condensed report.
We also very carefully check social media. It's not so much the things that people say on their own Facebook, it's the things people's friends and relatives say that give you the bread crumbs you need to find more information.
Investor · Manteca, CA · Member since 2017 · 1k+ posts · 2k+ votes
6y
You either charge an application fee and pay for the credit check/background with that $$ or you have the applicant pay for the credit and background directly themselves.... NOT both
The goal is to be efficient and not lose $$ in the process.
By having the applicant pay the fee you also take yourself out of that loop...... you don't see a dime and there are no refunds if you don't get picked....out of my hands. There are landlords out there that use the "application fee" as a revenue source.... they willingly take your $$ when the have zero intent on accepting you.