Best ways to do Background and Credit Check on new tenants.

[Kate K.]

Hi everbody,

my husband and I are just starting in Real Estate business. Our 1st tenants we have inherited as we purchased our 1st investment property over a year ago. In 2 days we are closing on our 2nd investment property and I did all due diligence in listing and marketing the property, communicating with all interested people and selecting potential tenants. I've scheduled individual showings of the property the next day after the closing to 7 different prospective tenants that we've selected. 

This is our first experience having to find new tenants. My husband has a full-time job, so I am managing all this process by myself and since I am not familiar with the protocol on how to screen tenants properly and what steps I should take and in which order, I'd like to ask if anyone can help. Should I first find 1 tenant that we would consider to rent our property to and run their credit and background check, previously collecting the application fee (also, what's the right amount?) or to do things in a different order? Our lawyer advised that once we collected the application fee from them and their background and credit check came back good, then we have to rent the property to them by law. 

Anyone can give any advise? I read a lot of forums on here where it is advised tenants to go to different websites to do their background and credit check because of the fact that only they can answer those security questions. Is that right? Or there is a way where I can run a background and credit check on them myself?

All your advice is most welcome :)

Kate and Jeff