All Forum Posts by: Vitaliy Merkulov

A lot of people are saying that the reason why the rent prices are going up so much is because there is too much demand and not enough rental units available. 

But could bad tenants also contribute to the rent spikes?

According to NARPM 2017 report, the most requested service from landlords is tenant screening. 

Do any of you know any statistics about the damage that bad tenants cause landlords each year? Or any way to track down if bad tenants, and new laws that protect bad tenants maybe contribute to landlords raising the rent prices?

I see some landlords recommend searching social media about the applicant as part of tenant screening. Is this legal to make a decision based on what is found on social media about applicant? 

I know some websites like beenverified, instantcheckmate are not allowed to be used for tenant screening. But are social networking sites allowed to be used for tenant screening?

Always do rental reference verifications, nobody knows them more then the previous landlord. And the tenants habits are usually the same as they were in the past. Don't settle for what they look like on paper. Trust but verify, always. 

 Why don't you trust Trans Union data? 

Remember i'm not looking for credit report, I'm just looking for a eviction report. Or those are only available as a add-on with a credit report?

ok, what's the best deal that you've found on eviction checks?

I know there are a lot of companies that offer eviction, background check, terrorist check in addition to a credit report. But I just want to see if there are any cheeper places to run the eviction check separate from credit check to see if I could save money that way.

Any recommendations where I can get the cheapest eviction check without running the credit check or criminal check? Please include a website and the price if you can please.

Thanks a lot

Jenny,

I had a tenant that had a really good credit score, had a good job, and nothing looked suspicious. But once I let them in. They turned out to be tenants from hell. It turned out that they faked their landlord so their friend acted like their landlord when I called the "previous landlord".

Thank you @Michelle Lyons for some advice on how to check if the landlord you're talking to is really a landlord. But let me assure you, professional fake landlords will still fool anyone with your trick questions. I'm not sure if you know that there are a lot of fake landlord services that tenant hire to act as their fake previous landlords and those professional fake landlords know how to fool landlords. They ask the tenants a lot of questions before they act as their fake landlord, so they will answer all your questions and fool you. Just google "fake landlord reference" 

That is why I'm trying to get landlords to start using renterinc.com to request landlord references. The reason why they are doing this for free is because they store all the landlord references in their database and allow future landlords to search for the landlord references that were submitted through their website. 

The website requires the previous landlord/property manager to verify that they are truly the LL/pm by asking them to submit supporting documents before the LL/pm can submit a reference. Let the website do the job of verifying the landlords, so don't be fooled by thinking that you can out fake the fake landlords. So for your next landlord reference check, call the previous landlord on the application and tell them that you're using a new system that verify's the landlord so they need to submit the reference through this website instead of fax. Oh and tell them, that every time they submit a reference on this website, they will get credits that will allow them to search other landlord's references about their applicants.

@Karl Huth I totally agree with you that tenant screening is the most important part of being a landlord and that landlord references are absolutely essential to tenant screening. From what I hear, a lot of landlords don't like to request or provide landlord references because they are not sure what they can ask and what they can provide in the references due to fear of not knowing all the laws of fair housing, and being afraid of doing something wrong and being sued.

However, @Kaycee Miller gave a good general rule to what you can ask on a landlord references. 

Here are some questions that you can ask on a landlord reference.