NC evictions and tenant personal information

[Chris Martin]

Just a heads up if/when you need to file an NC eviction. If you use SmartMove or other third party screening systems where a landlord or manager does not have to (or does not want to) take personal information on an application because the "system" takes care of the screening, you may still want to collect a prospect's Social Security Number (SSN) and/or birthdate. Most landlords do anyway, but now it's required for some court actions.

In some counties, now including Wake, the clerk of court requires the plaintiff to certify via a S the tenant's status. Without an affirmation of the tenant's military status, the judge will (per the clerk) most likely either a) continue the case until the plaintiff completes the affidavit with 1(c) NOT checked or b) dismiss the case.

So for my company's implementation (a "best practice" implementation for us) here's what we do. Before we show any property, we get the name and birthdate of an applicant. We use the name and birthdate to verify the Once we get a "pass" (in other words the applicant does not fail our criminal history screening) we put the name and birthdate into a database. If/when needed for the affidavit, we can easily look it up. Obviously a database isn't necessary. A pen and paper can work as well.