Sadly, fraud is everywhere, including property rentals. Rental fraud occurs when tenants move in with no intention of paying rent, eventually forcing the landlord to evict them. The entire process can take up to three months or more; in the meantime, the landlord has lost out on months’ worth of rent. These deadbeat tenants often use landlords as a revolving line of credit, while failing to pay rent and causing damage to the rental property. Since rental fraud is a civil matter, these tenants often have no fear of the consequences. As a landlord, it’s crucial to take steps to protect yourself from high-risk tenants playing the rental fraud game.
The Importance of Background Checks
Before renting to anyone, it’s crucial to conduct a thorough background check (including credit and criminal history) to make sure you’re not dealing with a fraudulent tenant. While you may have good intuition about potential tenants, there’s no way to be absolutely certain that the tenant in question is truly trustworthy without screening. When you consider that most laws are on the side of the tenant, and that eviction can be a long, difficult process, screening is an essential step to take to ensure that you’re making the most informed decisions possible when selecting a tenant who will reside at your rental property.
Rental fraud is an unfortunate reality – and one more reason to use a reputable tenant screening firm like Tenant Screening Center. Not only will using screening services save you valuable time, but it will also potentially save you money in the long run by avoiding fraud and troublesome tenants. With our tenant screening, you can choose which services you’d like to have performed, including credit checks, bankruptcy records, collection records, eviction records, social security number verification, and criminal records.
It can be difficult to decide who to rent to, but our screening services make it easy to weed out the problematic tenants from the ideal tenants!
Landlords Property Managers Contact TSCI