Confirm Evictions for someone with very common name

[Tim Czarkowski]

Here in Jacksonville we have a online record search that let's you pull the county eviction records. Unfortunately when someone has a common name I often get hundreds of records and multiple evictions with no way to tell if it is my applicant or another John Q Public. I looked at a couple tenant check services but they look like they use the same records I am using now so they don't appear to be too helpful. How can I confirm whether these eviction are for my applicant or not? There must be some way to cross check it with their SSN or birthday.

[Steve Babiak]

You're looking to cross reference to be certain you have an exact match - that is a good practice. So knowing how to do it and what to look for is important.

First thing I check is whether there is an address of the defendant in the case information. If there is, you then have two ways to cross reference. First is the address history that a credit report will contain; if the applicant lived at the address where the eviction is showing, then you can consider that a match. The other way is to look up the property ownership for the time in question and contact the owner, to see whether the owner has records that can be cross referenced. You supply the last 4 digits of the SSN, and the owner says match or not.

I had a name match once on an uncommon name, and from another state to boot. The second method was what I had to resort to. Contacted the owner at the time of eviction (he had since sold it), and tried to check for a match. That owner was a "hobbyist" landlord - he had no info on the tenant that we normally collect in the application process. So, after several emails and phone conversations, we determined that he could match the appearance of his tenant-from-hell to a photograph. Had the driver's license of my applicant scanned, and sent that via email. It was not a match to the deadbeat, and turned out to be an excellent tenant still in that unit to this day.

I still suggest going through ALL known addresses of the applicant that you get back in the credit report, and contacting owner of the property to check up on the applicant. This is one way to reduce the amount of checking with common names. You are almost certain to get matches to derogatory information with common names - in criminal, eviction and judgment matters.

Not sure about collecting larger deposits - many local laws disallow deposits that are excessive. And it's no guarantee that you'll get better behavior. But maybe it works for you.