Trans union smartmove

[Max Briggs]

I have three single family rentals for three years and I now have my first horror story. To this point I have been using trans union’s smartmove software to do credit, background, and eviction checks on my tenants. One of my applicants showed up with little credit but no defaults, no evictions, and only traffic violations and verified income high enough to cover well over 3 times the rent and I accepted the tenant despite there being some signs.

He paid the rent in time for the most part until a few weeks ago when he stopped and I could not get ahold of him. I come to find out he’s been arrested. In digging into the details through public record searches I find out that he has had 3 evictions, several drug convictions, and a violent crime. All of this passed the trans union smartmove screen without raising any flags at all. 

Now I know there are an army of people that are going to tell me that I should have done my own screening of the public records, and all I can say is I know. I wish I had. But I thought that’s what smartmove was doing and I trusted it too much. I’m offering my story as a warning. Trans union missed an obvious reject candidate and now I’m paying the price. Hopefully someone will read this and they won’t be in the same place as me. 

Also, if anyone knows of any other background check services that are more reliable please let me know. I am never using smartmove again. 

[Chad Hale]

FWIW

I use tenantalert.com  They used to be different name.  I recently discovered a traffic violation from North Carolina that showed up as a criminal record for an applicant.  The applicant was initially upset and claimed no other reports has previously caught flagged this. I called the courts and verified what it was.  My report was correct.