If you go this route, business credit cards or personal credit cards which do not report to the credit bureaus. 

A lot of great options out there for self-managing if you decide to go that route; aside from providing the basics (listing, tenant screening, digital lease creation, rent collection, and maintenance tracking) some services also offer your tenants additional capabilities which makes it an easier sell on your end when getting them to transition over (ie. their ability to report on-time rent payments to the credit bureaus).

One of them will simply charge you a flat fee to send one collection letter and then report the debt to all three bureaus, and the collection will show as a debt to a landlord. 

At least, they would report them to the three credit bureaus. 

, you file your small claims suit.If they don't then pay like they're supposed to, you can use a landlord collection agency, which will report the debt to you, to all three credit bureaus. 

Anyways, Your statement above implies that in the UK the SSN equivalent is NOT required, and thus that in the US it is required, to run a credit check.Are you proposing a way to check a person's creditworthiness for renting an apartment, with the US credit bureaus, without SSN?

Neil:There are credit bureaus (TransUnion) which operate in both Canada and the U.S.A. and agencies such as TVS which provide landlords with credit history services in both countries.  

The statute of limitations in small claims cases varies from two years (for breach of an oral agreement) up to four years (for breach of a written contract, like a lease).Lastly, even if you decide not to go through with a small claims case, I would suggest you at least consider reporting their debt to the credit bureaus through a company like one of these: Mr Landlord Debt Reporting Service or Rent Recovery Service. 

I am running out of ideas to recover this $2000 from hera) Retaining a lawyer starts from $3500, so it is ruled outb) I am out of state landlord, so I dont know if it is practical to approach small/petty claims court. c) Some one tells me I can directly go to collections, but I donot know where it takes me to.At the least, I want this issue to appear in her rental records, credit records (and possibly court records), so that she would not go scott-freeWhat are my options in a) trying to recover the damages and b) reporting the tenant  to credit/rental/etc bureaus. 

Sure, there may be some who have to fight with the credit bureaus to fix errors, but I doubt that a credit report that you would deny a tenant based on, would be that big a mystery.For instance, judgments for cell phone and cable bills, or one for a previous landlord.