5 Benefits of Requiring a Tenant Background Check

Why should you require a tenant background check?

Tenant background checks help you avoid troublesome tenant behavior. Serious issues like violence and liability can be avoided with thorough tenant screening.

Here are 5 benefits of requiring tenant background checks:

Keep Your Community and Yourself Safe

As you’re choosing a tenant, you should think of it as who you are letting into your unit, building, and neighborhood. You need to trust that person and know he or she will not put your community at risk.

Similarly, you will be working directly with your tenant. If a prospective tenant has a serious, violent criminal history, then you are putting yourself at risk of being harmed.

Tenant background checks warn you if a tenant is potentially dangerous, so you can avoid harm before it’s done.

Avoid Liability

Keeping everyone safe is important, but it’s also important to recognize that you are liable for your tenant’s actions. For example, if you rent to someone with a history of theft and he or she robs a neighbor, then you are liable for damages.

This is true whether you require a tenant background check or not, meaning ignorance is not an excuse. It’s better to require a tenant background check and gather as much information as you can to make an educated decision.

If your tenant screening is successful, then you will rent to someone who saves you money and trouble by avoiding the headache of liability.

Discourage Tenants Who are Hiding Something

Requiring a tenant background check is a screening tool because it shows you are a serious landlord. If a prospective tenant has something to hide, he or she will avoid moving forward in the process with you.

If this is the case, then you are better off avoiding that troublesome tenant. You want to discourage anyone who is trying to hide something, as this is a huge red flag.

Verify Information on a Rental Application

As a tenant fills out your rental application, he or she will likely answer a question similar to, “Have you ever been convicted of a crime?”

The tenant will answer yes or no, but how do you know if he or she is telling the truth? You can verify a tenant's answer with hard evidence by requiring a background check.

Tenant background checks will scan all 50 states’ criminal records, so you are assured that your tenant is telling the truth.

Hold onto Quality Tenants

When you screen tenants for quality (i.e. no serious criminal history), then you increase your chances of finding tenants who will stick around. If you rent to someone who ends up burglarizing his or her neighbor, then you just put yourself in a situation of needing to find a new tenant. Tenant background checks help you avoid the trouble of constantly needing new tenants. 

Conclusion

To be a successful landlord, you need a solid screening process, including a tenant background check. Today, landlord software is available to make this step easy to complete. Take advantage of tools that automate the rental process so you reap the benefits of requiring a tenant background check.