Newbie help - background checks - unique situation w multistate

[Samantha Teal]

Hello all! 

Spent way too much time in the last day reading up on all of the tenant screening resources - wow there are so many options!! Looking for your input and your results!! 

We are landlords in WI - so we’ve always just used CCAP (free criminal records) as all of our tenants have been from WI. 

Well now we have an applicant who works on contract, and moves states every 1-2 years. This applicant has lived in 5-6 different states! If you have experience with this type of applicant and have run a background check that will pull from MANY states please speak up! I keep finding reviews on resources I think are great and then someone posts “they missed X in state Y”. 

On our paper app the applicant appears to be a good pick. But with this background I’m nervous it could be really easy to hide any “bad” history. 

Also want to add - we want to run this background check entirely on our end - I’m worried the applicant might mark “only lived in WI” and then the resource we use will not actually check nationwide records. It will only check WI, and we’ve already done that. We have all of the data already - name, date of birth, SSN, etc. 

Please point us in the right direction - thank you so much for your help and feedback!!! Please if your resource missed data post that below as well. 

Thank you!! 

[Clint Shelley]

I second TransUnion smart move. You send the tenant a link. You can pay or they pay. You don't get their social or dl number, so you don't have to have special Bs for security. Less liability on you. If had food success with it.

Clint