YES, that's OFFENSIVE.

Vehicles, equipment, inventory, accounts receivables and orders, your security is accomplished with an agreement and/with UCC filings.When doing due diligence in such an opportunity, begin with him personally, then his business history, then financials, then compliance issues that may be applicable, then employees, with employees, look at criminal records, pay being customary and work history.

Actually, they don't need to have SSN to be looked up in the criminal records, just the name suffices.

Thanks manNo offense to anyone here, but they got it ALL completely wrong.

. - Great question and some excellent responses and I wanted to point out two in particular (no offense to all the great responses).Bill G. beat me to a comment I wanted to make on here.

So I do criminal background, verify employment, verify income(paystubs), and try and drive by their current rental property to assess condition.

The most important things you need to know are their social, dob, current and previous addresses with rental amounts and dates, including landlord names and numbers, where they work, how much they get paid, general yes and no ques about rental issues and criminal issues (many will lie here so it is easy place to get denials for), emergency contact info, drivers license no, phones no and the authorization section that you will need to fax to apartment buildings to verify rental history.

Some income may not qualify, seasonal jobs that are not regularly performed, part time jobs that are not performed on a regular basis, employment income received from a job or line of work less than two years, child support payments that are not paid through any court system with a history of on time payments.I would insist on saying that "Compensating factors effecting credit, income, employment and criminal histories will be considered to the benefit of the applicant".

You'd have to establish that they're "at fault" (i.e. failed to pay rent, breached a material term of the lease, engaging in criminal activity on the property, etc).  

My written warning reminds them it is illegal, criminal behavior is grounds for termination, and that they will be charged for any damages or additional cleaning required.