Why tenant screening

Not only can background checks protect you from potentially bad tenants but they can also shield you from charges of discrimination. It is illegal to deny rentals to someone based on arbitrary characteristics such as age, sex, race, religion or disability. You can use your background screening data as good support for your case if you deny a tenant the right to rent.

Your email address will not be published. Skip links Skip to primary navigation Skip to content Skip to primary sidebar Skip to footer If you are a landlord, one of the most important things you can do is screen your prospective tenants carefully. It should include, at a minimum, the following: Criminal record. In most states it is legal and wise to obtain a criminal background check on your tenants. The tenant may submit a plan to the prospective landlord detailing any and all efforts they have undertaken to address and eliminate the issues that led to the crime, in addition to letters of support or certificates from drug rehabilitation programs, case managers, or other landlords.

The ACLU may also be able to offer assistance. In addition, the City of Seattle is currently considering a proposal to make it illegal for housing providers to discriminate against tenants on the basis of arrest or conviction record history.

This would move toward ending discrimination against people whose past record does not related to their tenancy. See Criminal Record Discrimination for more information. Prospective landlords will generally want to verify your employment status and income to ensure that you make enough money to afford the rent. Some landlords require that tenants earn double or triple the amount of rent. You can decide what information you are comfortable sharing with your landlord, and how you would like to share it.

If you are not comfortable with providing a prospective landlord with your bank account information, you may decide to provide a copy of your bank statement that shows your name, account history and balance, but black out the account numbers. Or you may offer to show them paycheck invoices as an alternative. The landlord may decide not to rent to you on the basis of any information you decide not to provide, but the integrity of your personal information will remain intact.

Landlords can legally ask for social security numbers on rental applications as long as they are not doing so in a discriminatory manner. For example, it would be a violation of fair housing laws for a landlord to ask only individuals from one particular ethnic group for their social security numbers.

If they ask one tenant, they must ask all tenants. If they are requesting social security numbers in a nondiscriminatory manner, landlords can legally choose not to rent to tenants who do not provide valid social security numbers. It is not necessarily discriminatory if a landlord does not rent to you because of any problems with your screening report. A landlord does not have to tell you exactly why they chose not to rent to you. They do have to inform you that they denied you for tenancy and tell you how to get a copy of the report on which they based their decision.

Landlords cannot deny tenancy on the basis of any discriminatory reason or choose not to rent to you on the basis of any protected class, including race, gender, sexual orientation, disability, family status or national origin. As long as landlords are not collecting information in a discriminatory manner, there are no laws restricting what information is asked of you on a rental application.

However, there are laws restricting how that information can be used. You may ask why the landlord wants the information and what they are going to do with it.

They must have a legitimate business reason for requesting it from you. TU Victory! This law exists because members of the Tenants Union worked together and fought for it. There are additional protections in the law for tenants who are survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault or stalking. RCW These protections are critical in ensuring that survivors can access housing and secure a safe and stable home for themselves and their families.

When a survivor of domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking requests a protection order from the court against their abuser, it becomes a public record. Other tenants in the building will be affected by a poor quality neighbor and may even report you to your condo board. A poor quality tenant may also cause turnover in the building, which could result in extra marketing fees on your end. You may also find that it becomes more and more difficult to find new tenants to take over other units in the building.

Most tenants do their research about a building before moving in. If you have a bad reputation of allowing unsociable people to live in the building, new tenants may avoid your building. Keep everyone in the building content by ensuring new tenants are neighborly. The tenant screening process will help to weed out particularly unsociable tenants. Here at Del Condominium Rentals, we have decades of experience managing condominium properties on behalf of private landlords. With more than units under our care, we are one of the most trusted property management companies in the GTA.

Ask additional tenant screening questions during your face-to-face meeting to determine if they are serious about renting and if you want to continue the screening process. Using the same application form for every prospective tenant can better help you evaluate tenants and keeps you in compliance with fair housing laws. This is where you collect information such as current and prior landlords, employment history, references, and prior evictions.

Make sure you have a place for a signature and retain your copies to protect yourself in the case of a future dispute. Now you need to verify the self-reported information the applicant has provided in conversation and on the written application. Since you need to spend time calling references and verifying current income, it makes sense to simplify the process of running credit, criminal and eviction history reports.

To make the most effective use of your time, TransUnion SmartMove rental screening provides comprehensive credit , criminal , eviction and Income Insights reports in a matter of minutes and allows you to manage all of your rental properties with one tenant screening system. Go back over your initial criteria to determine whether or not a prospective tenant is a match. With an easier screening process from SmartMove, you can screen more potential tenants so you find the right fit without compromising on any of the important steps.

Choosing the right online tenant screening service means getting the reliable information you can trust. SmartMove offers you a tenant credit report , criminal report , eviction check , and Income Insights report and ResidentScore so you can feel more confident about your tenant decision.