Screening a Small Business Owner

[David Woz]

We made a tough family decision to move my mom into a senior living environment from her family home.   I decided to rent the house instead of sell it and in preparation, gave the house a much needed makeover.

Part of that makeover was repairing some plantation shutters the house has.   I found a company on Yelp with great reviews and hired them to repair and replace several shutters in the house.

Before I engaged a local property manager (I have several out of state rentals and always use a property manager) the owner of the shutter company called me and and said he was interested in renting the place in my area and his employee had told him about it.  

I asked them to fill out an application using "Zillow's application and background" service.  Really disappointing.  Didn't mandate they upload any financial documents or statements, just listed a dollar amount as "self reported".. The only thing useful from their report was a credit report.

Both husband and wife own the business.   Her credit is great.  Mid 700's.   4K on a credit card and no collections.  His is in the low 600's with a few collections accounts for a few hundred dollars and one 60K collections account for what appear to be student loans.   (Strikes me as odd as he is 63 years old).   But, he has no debt... not even a car payment.   

I'm not concerned about verifying they actually have a business as I know they do.   I know that they were very difficult to get them scheduled because they were so busy and they did great work.  They claim 7 full time employees plus them for 9 total employees.    When I met with them, they mentioned they deal with a lot of cash and actually Prefered to pay with cash... even offered me 4K right there as a deposit to "reserve" it... But I didn't take it.  

I'm concerned about the collections and have no idea how to verify their income, especially if it is as cash heavy as they claim.

Would anyone deny based on the large 60K in collections on student loans?   Anyone rented to a small business owner like this?

Any advice on next steps would be appreciated.