landlord screening services

[Sam Dal]

folks - my friend found a good apartment in a private home but the owner of the homehas no google or linkedin results at all in spite of working for a large company. We find that suspicious - are there any services that allow us to do a background check without asking the landlord's permission? My friend is uncofortable getting a prior authorizatin as he doesn't see it as a common thing in his market so looking for a reliable service to do this online 

thx