Tenant Screen for Housing Court
Does anyone know where/how you can screen potential tenants for their history in housing court?? Trying to avoid people that have been working the system, living rent-free, etc.. Thanks!
Does anyone know where/how you can screen potential tenants for their history in housing court?? Trying to avoid people that have been working the system, living rent-free, etc..
Thanks!
There is a great company that I use to tenant screen, hopefully this helps you out!
Tenantverification.com they have just housing for $8.95 or a credit+criminal+eviction report for $33.90.
Thanks everyone — if anyone has a suggestion for housing court besides tenantalert (which I will likely go with but it takes quite some time to set up an account and I’ve got a few pending applications to process..)
Thanks!
I would seriously take recommendations from past landlords with a grain of salt. Many landlords will cut deals with tenants they want to go away, thereby shuffling their problems onto another landlord. I would also consult HPD Complaints for the applicant’s previous address, and cross-reference with Housing Court history. For example, if a tenant has called HPD 50 times in one heating season, but is the only tenant to complain, and there are no violations issued, you likely have a bad tenant. But if a host of tenants have complained in one building, and there are violations, then you clearly have a bad landlord. (Although I think records of complaints that do not result in violation are only are kept for a year).
There are a number of search services. But just be aware that a housing court search will bring up all actions in which the tenant is a named party. You wont know if the guy is a deadbeat or if the person is an honest guy who was a named plaintiff in a legitimate suit against a slumlord. More important is recommendations from past landlord and letter of employment and W-2s
tenantaleart.com does National checks…The entire check cost around $30-$50. It’s not worth that kind of money to fins out if you’re renting to a criminal?
wait, how do we know youre not a slum lord, and youre just looking for people who dont know how housing court works?
but seriously, housing court status is much more important than checking a tenant’s credit.
do the right thing, skip the credit check 🙂 credit is meaningless in this economy anyway.
*rob*
From what I understand, they are only able to tell you about NYC landlord-tenant court, so if your applicant was evicted in say, Los Angeles, there’d be no way to tell. Criminal background checks are time-consuming, expensive, and inaccurate, as many states don’t put all their data into the system – not worth the money in my opinion. The usual things should tip you off – generally speaking, criminals don’t have good credit, steady employment, or healthy bank accounts, unless they’re of the white-collar variey, in which case they’re probably buying real estate (or stealing it from others via eminent domain).
I use tenantalert.com. You will need to run a landlord/tentant and background check. Background check helps too, it will tell you he or she is a criminal..