All Forum Posts by: Di Ye

@Di Ye- Typically your state has a public court search website. For example in Indiana we have mycase.in.gov. depending on where the history of the person was... is the state of public court system you need to search. Watch out for all the pay websites that will "search for you"... I have learned this lesson before and avoid them. 

It appears that CA does it by county. For example you're looking for someone who lived in San Jose, look in Santa Clara county's public case search here... https://www.scscourt.org

It takes some looking and clicking around, but once you have the right site, you're good to go. Look for civil cases and see if there are any evictions filed under small claims court (that's at least how they are filed here in IN).

@Di Ye Whatever you do and whatever your method of screening... you must remain consistent! If you apply one standard for one applicant and another standard later down the road, you can find yourself in some nasty situations legally. 

I am a believer that people's past is a predictor of the future. I've been doing this since '05 and I've only evicted two people in our small 12 unit portfolio since then. Credit is a funny predictor and I personally choose not to run credit. It costs money and I can get public records for free that I deem more reliable than the credit bureaus. 

Stay Consistent.