A Rental History Check is Vital for Landlords | PropertyNow
Weeding out the good from the bad using rental history checks
Intro: Bad tenants are bad news. They can cause extensive damage to your most valuable investment – your property. And it can be a nightmare to get them to pay their rent on time, if at all.
Good tenants will make your life and the experience of renting your property much less stressful and more financially rewarding.
A rental history check will help you to determine who the best tenant is for your property. Such assessments will steer you away from hostile endings and bitter court battles.
Sure, you could just ask for personal references. But if you stop and think about it, no intelligent tenant is going to submit bad references.
What you need are cold hard facts, and a rental history check can give you these.
How do I conduct a rental history check?
It’s not complicated at all. You don’t have to spend weeks of your life wading through piles of paper and ringing 20 organisations. Property Now has made the process hassle-free and simple. Our team can organise the check for you, and we’ll check your potential tenant across multiple databases. Databases that can only be accessed by members, such as Property Now.
What are we checking for when we run a tenant through these databases? Perhaps the first thing we’re looking for is if a tenant has been blacklisted.
Blacklisted tenants
Tenants can be blacklisted:
- When they owe more than the bond covers (e.g., due to not paying rent or causing property damage)
- If a court or tribunal orders that they be listed (e.g., for using the property for illegal purposes, for harming a person, for causing reckless and wilful damage)
My tenant hasn’t been blacklisted. Does that mean they’ll make good tenants?
Unfortunately, not. You need to be cautious. Just because a rental check reveals that a tenant hasn’t been blacklisted, it doesn’t mean they never have been or never will be.
Keep in mind:
- Tenants can only be blacklisted for three years
- Tenants can only be blacklisted once their lease has expired (they cannot be blacklisted while a lease is still current)
For this reason, when we carry out a rental history check, we also carry out more robust background checks.
This includes:
- Obtaining and checking references – because, let’s face it, if tenants can’t produce them at all, it’s a huge red flag
- Conducting credit and bankruptcy checks
- Getting copies of past payment histories to see if they are habitually late or non-payers
- Carrying out reviews to see if they’ve been taken to court for a matter relating to a rental agreement
- Doing a police background check
- Verifying the tenants’ identity to make sure they are who they say they are and to protect you against identity fraud
Property Now can conduct these checks for you for a small fee. See our costs here.
What next?
It’s time to decide, given all the information gathered, who the best tenant is for your property.
Contact us today and let us help you find the perfect tenant for your property.