Make sure you run credit checks, criminal background and contact previous landlords.

I prosecute people for a living. 

Think of it this way: if we were to screen tenants on criminal background, credit, eviction history, landlord references, and income (3X that of rent and employee verified), even with 25 tenant applications, it's difficult to find a reliable tenant to match all those criteria.

For example a tenant has to meet certain qualifications to be able to rent your property: income, credit score, evictions, rental history, criminal history, etc.

thats a great outcome.. and back to what I always say this stuff is state specific. did you also have to put the agreed amount of the purchase price into escrow on the closing date or could you just hold your money and prosecute the action ?

An even bigger issue is that Zillow routinely misses evictions and criminal charges that a quick docket search in the locations listed in in the credit report turns up.

@James Bartlett There can be civil and criminal penalties for mortgage fraud.

The reason I know this is some of my clients over the years and pretty sharp folks went down that rabbit hole and before they committed asked me to step in so I went through the whole pitch.. its amazing these guys are very good at what they do.. but end of the day they are just criminal orignizations.. 

But when one of the parties is licensed by a governmental board of some sort, the board can subject the licensed individual to higher standards behavior, and they can do this largely at will and without the higher thresholds of most criminal laws.

He confirmed that BART enables criminals to travel to the Dublin/Pleasanton area to commit crimes.