How to Effectively Verify a Trustworthy Tenant

Crucial steps must be performed prior to accepting a tenant into your property.

As a landlord, you’re tasked with an assortment of responsibilities and duties that, in order to be successful, must be handled efficiently. One of these tasks involves finding the right tenant for your property.

Be Prepared for a Melting Pot of Tenant Types

Now, it doesn’t take a seasoned landlord to know that not all tenants are created equal. You’ll experience the ones that are constantly late on their monthly rent, ones that are unruly and belligerent, and even some that will try to manipulate your contract to their benefit. Needless to say, they come in all shapes and sizes. To counter this, one of the best things to do is to perform effective tenant background checks on each serious applicant. This way, you’ll get an in-depth understanding on what type of individual, or individuals, you are dealing with. Doing so can essentially help protect your investment.

Income Verification

Tenant verification services that you do business with will cover nearly every aspect of the tenant’s habits and tendencies. Be sure that you follow up by having them provide a copy of their most recent pay stub – the last two are ideal. You can also go as far as to contact their employer to confirm their employment if need be – although this route isn’t very common with landlords. However, if you do feel that the individual could be lying, it might be necessary to verify their income via this method.

Credit Check

While this gives you an opportunity to witness their overall credit score, you’ll also get detailed information on their history of paying bills on time, their debt-to-income ratio, if he/she has any prior evictions, etc. A credit check is a valuable tool in your arsenal. A well-spoken individual could easily fool you during the interview process, but when it’s all said and done, the credit report will never lie.

The Bottom Line

All in all, by performing these steps prior to accepting your candidate, you’ll get a solid understanding of what type of tenant you are letting in to your property. It’s especially important that you take precautionary measures because it’s your investment after all. The amount of money that you invested is a substantial amount – and nurturing it is one of the most important ways to help your investment grow.

Tenant Screening Services, LLC can help provide you with an efficient instant online background check solution for your landlord needs.