Properly Screening Tenants

[Brian Davis]

Hello,

I am newer to biggerpockets and still looking to do my first investment.  Rates are just so high right now that it is making it difficult to pull the trigger on anything.  I actually do background screening and investigations for a living and was curious of the process for most landlords.  I am noticing that most people are just doing criminal, eviction records and credit checks.  

Again, having knowledge of doing background screening for a living I am trying to figure out why most landlords are not doing Civil records searches?  Does anybody know why these are not standard on tenant screening?  Eviction records would likely show up in any civil records searches, but would give so much more information on tenants.  For example if you ran a civil search you may discover the applicant may have a restraining order against them or are be involved in multiple civil lawsuits, domestic issues, or being sued for anything else.  Most of this stuff will never show up in the criminal courts because with civil, those are "person vs person" and technically anybody can claim anything against anybody even frivolous lawsuits that would not show up in criminal.  With that said, as a landlord I feel that would be extremely important to know if someone has been sued by 3 or 4 different people for not paying them or having domestic issues.  

Maybe someone with more experience here can explain why I do not see civil screening as part of the regular process.  Lastly, my company also does social media screening.  Wouldn't this be important to run as well?  I would really like to learn why these are not standard.

Thank you!

[Aaron Francl]

@Brian Davis You bring up some great points. Tenant screening is one of the more important aspects of investing and you can never have enough guardrails in place to protect your assets. 

I don't have a response for "why this is not a bigger concern..." per se, I'm sure there are some PM's that could chime in here. I've never discussed civil fact-finding before, but again, more than fair to ask bc you do bring up great points. 

The social media fact-finding is absolutely a good one to deploy during screening and it's something I do as well. LinkedIn is valuable too so that you can verify job history, etc. Lastly, yes, call landlords as @Alan Asriants mentions is crucial. But I'd go a step further and call the previous landlords as well bc if they're a non-ideal tenant, a current landlord may give you a glowing recommendation to free themselves of that person!