Georgia Real Estate Laws

[Amanda Cates]

I have a quick question for all the experienced landlords out there. I made a huge mistake when accepting a lease puyrchase on my rental. Two years ago we had our rental house for sale. We didn't intend on becoming landlords but we bought at the height of the market and were upside down in the house. We had to move so we rented it for a year then put it on the market. We didn't have a lot of interest but a lease purchase came along so I trusted our realtor and their realtor. We were told that he hadn't been at his commission job for two years so he wouldnt be able to buy until this happened. We did a lease for 18 months and let our realtor handle the lease and all of the verification. Big mistake. The renter let 5 dogs live in the house so you can imagine what we walked into when he decided not to buy. So I contacted my realtor to get a copy of the background check for court because we are going to attempt to get some money out of the tenant for damages. Well our realtor didn't do a background check. All that was done was a verification that he had a job and income. The realtor didn't even verify this himself, he took the finance guys word for it. The realtor felt like everything was okay because finance officer said he would rent to the tenant. It's my fault for not visually seeing the background check but I asked several times who handled the reference and background check and I trusted the real estate agent & his company since they did the lease. They were not managing the property, I was doing that. I am just curious if it should have been done or if I should have done it? What is everyone's experience with this? Oh and I turns out the guy had bad credit but I was never told this. I was only told that he hadn't been at his job long enough.