Do your own tenant screening?

[Erik K.]

Hello everyone,

Lots of tenant application/screening services can be seen using a Google search. There are so many that I'm deadlocked due to the excessive freedom of choice! Plus, there are no trustworthy reviews of these services.

Would the price they charge the applicant deter too many candidates from renting a room in my home?

I could just do many of the screening steps myself: check my state's sex offender registry, search for convictions using the websites of each county the applicant has resided in recently, and ask the applicant to unfreeze their Experian credit file for me. And I would phone all the references myself, even if I used one of those screeners.

Only law enforcement people are empowered to search crime databases nationally, as far as I can tell. This makes me wonder how all these tenant screening websites are searching.

Do you rely on such a screening service, or do you have your own process?

Thanks in advance for your ideas and replies!