My Phantom Tenant picked by my ex-PM company

[Cal C.]

I recently evicted a tenant who had never lived in my property.  He had signed the lease as a favor for his sister in law (a professional tenant).  I could go on and on about this tenancy, but that is not the reason for this post.  I did write about the eviction a little here http://beta.biggerpockets.com/forums/52/topics/117209-a-lesson-learned-in-court

Normally, this is fairly easy to prevent with a few pertinent questions to the applicant, but when it is a PM company, particularly a large one that is unwilling to share much information about an applicant, it may be very difficult to ascertain who will actually be living in the property.   You need to discuss these types of issues in depth with any Property Management company that you employ.  Ask them point blank how do they determine if the applicant is actually going to be the one living in the property.  

Obviously there will be some who slip through the cracks, but the vast majority of false flag applicants can be screened out with the right questions.  

[Patrick L.]

It can be hard when someone is willing to use their personal information when applying for a rental for someone else.  It happened to me once on a person I had to evict.  The mother who lived in a similarly priced apartment to the one I was was renting was the one that looked at the apt, filled out the application, used her ssn/dob/ID, provided her landlord and employment references, singed the lease, accepted the keys......and then her adult daughter moved in instead of her and lasted 3 months before being evicted. 

The daughter had 3 prior evictions which I found after I got her name, mom had 0 until this one (both were named because the mother was on the lease and the daughter was in possession).   Now the mother has an eviction and judgement on her record, hopefully she learned her lesson.