Each tenant who signs is agreeing to the lease terms such as:  they will pay rent on time, take care of the place, not engage in criminal activity, etc. 

It cost $35 for both criminal and credit checks and the information provided was relevant.  

Unfortunately our economy is not particularly friendly to people with criminal records.

In Belgium, you can obtain criminal records from your local court.

[emphasis added.]This is threatening criminal prosecution for a civil contract matter, when there wasn't even a contract in place! 

He had them tested and charged the offending party the cost of testing plus $25 for first offense, + $40 second offense, etc.  

It is criminal trespassing in the state of Maryland.

This sounds like a outright fraud and criminal case best pursued thru the DA and Bureau of real estate as @Andy Cross said the 3 most important words in a real estate transaction is escrow, escrow, escrow .

You might want to have some confirmation regarding criminal records, drug offenses and sexual offenses of the occupants - you might accept the employer's checking of this but reserve the right to perform your own for verification purposes. 

And since we care much less about the top line, and much more about what's left of it after expenses, we should likely base out valuation decision on that NOI figure - 2% rule does not do that, which makes it criminally incomprehensible as an analysis tool, let alone a "rule".In order to use the NOI as the baseline income we cross over to the capitalization method of valuing property, whereby the NOI is capitalized via a multiplier know as the capitalization rate to arrive at a valuation.Finally, to Bob's comment, since cash flows are not static and must be discounted for time, inflation, and opportunity cost, a complete analysis would underwrite to the IRR (internal rate of return), which would take into account all of the movement of cash, including the exit which captures the appreciation and rent growth, if there are any.