Tenant screening and protecting their information

[Laura Hamilton]

Hi,

My husband and I are about to rent out our first investment property and need some advice, please.

Currently we're checking out our prospective tenant's information, including previous landlords and employers. To receive information from the previous landlords we have the tenant's authorization on the rental application to do that, but I wonder if it's normal practice to scan the papers and email the information to the previous landlords (so they can see the application and tenant's authorization to do that)? Why I'm asking this is because the application obviously includes their SSN and other private information and personally I always try to minimize sharing this kind of information about myself in an email. 

Yet, I wouldn't want to drive around showing the paper personally to the previous landlords either. And I don't have a fax, so can't fax it.

Thank you in advance for the advice!

Laura

[Tom Ott]

Originally posted by @Laura Hamilton:

Hi,

My husband and I are about to rent out our first investment property and need some advice, please.

Currently we're checking out our prospective tenant's information, including previous landlords and employers. To receive information from the previous landlords we have the tenant's authorization on the rental application to do that, but I wonder if it's normal practice to scan the papers and email the information to the previous landlords (so they can see the application and tenant's authorization to do that)? Why I'm asking this is because the application obviously includes their SSN and other private information and personally I always try to minimize sharing this kind of information about myself in an email. 

Yet, I wouldn't want to drive around showing the paper personally to the previous landlords either. And I don't have a fax, so can't fax it.

Thank you in advance for the advice!

Laura

Hello Laura,

This is a great question, and one that I handle a lot! Getting information from past landlords is very important. It helps you find out what kind of tenant you can expect. First off, great job thinking of the authorization, you'd be surprised how many people forget that.

What I like to do is have a separate authorization form. I have it separate from the rest of the application. It is simple and states that the applicant is granting me permission in getting their information from past landlords. Have them sign and date it. This way when you need to scan anything with that form it does not have any revealing information on it. As long as it clearly states what you can do and they have signed it you should be in the clean.

I hope this helped! Please let me know if you have any questions!