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Why credit reports are useless when screening tenants

Why? Because eviction judgments (forcible detainer and unlawful detainer judgments) are no longer being provided in credit reports, as they fall into the civil judgment category. As of July 1st, 2017 — Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion lawsuit settlement with various state AGs, agreed to the creation of the National Consumer Assistance Plan (NCAP). Property owners that rely on credit reports will notice an omission of public records, specifically tax liens and civil judgments that do not contain personally identifiable information (PII). Due to civil judgments traditionally not containing social security numbers and dates of birth (PII), they are being removed from credit reports.

Credit Scores: Are you getting the full tale of the tape?

A sizeable demographic percentage of mobile home renters are retirees who in their latter part of life do not carry credit card balances and thus, may be reported as insufficient credit history in the credit report. In addition, another demographic sector might be the type that pays everything in cash as they might not qualify for credit due to various circumstances. In conclusion, going by a credit score may affect how you judge a potential good paying tenant.

Our total package solution

Evictions, civil judgments, and tax liens are manually searched based on your rental applicant’s name, former names and address history regardless of whether they contain PIIs or not. Bankruptcies are searched in the federal bankruptcy court system based on their SSN and any known names. Our nationwide criminal database search is based on the name provided, aliases or former names uncovered in our Social Security Name/Aliases and Address history trace report. Priced at $45 per applicant. 24 hours or less turnaround.

Tenant Background Check – Sample Report

**Notice that in sample tenant screening report below, the original name provided by potential renter was her married name (Linda Brown) whereas all records were found under her former maiden name of Linda White.

Identity

Criminal Database Search

Our proprietary algorithm has simultaneously searched over 1 billion criminal records, including court, department of corrections and sex offender databases and has found:

Result 1

Result 2

In compliance with FCRA guidelines, any criminal database records should be confirmed at the originating source (county courthouse) as case records may be updated (i.e., pleaded down, sealed or expunged). It is strongly recommended to order our county courthouse criminal search to verify current status of any charges.

Bankruptcy Filings

Evictions

Tax Liens & Judgments

Federal and state fair housing and residential landlord-tenant laws impact the tenant screening process in several ways. In a nutshell, it is a violation of fair housing laws to treat protected individuals differently in the tenant screening process. Fair housing law at the federal level is found in Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968. The residential landlord-tenant law often limits what landlords may charge for tenant screening to the actual costs in obtaining the background information, not to exceed the customary costs charged by a screening service in the general area.