What Your Landlord Credit Check Will Reveal About Your Tenants

What Exactly is a Landlord Credit Check?

To put it very simply, running a credit check on your potential tenants will give you a screen shot of your tenant’s credit history and financial health. It is basically a powerful tool for answering this crucial question, “Will my tenant be likely to pay his rent every time?”

You won’t have to ask for the credit report of everyone who applies to stay on your rental property. Just reserve your credit checks for serious applicants who have viewed your property and are truly interested in becoming your tenant.

To get your hands on someone’s credit report, you will need to turn to your local credit reporting agency. Every credit report will usually about $20 to $30 and it’s up to you to decide whether you or your tenant will be paying for it.

Vital Financial Information that You Can Dig Up from Credit Reports

One crucial piece of date that you can obtain from a landlord credit check is your potential tenant’s debt and credit history. This will reveal to you what types of loans he has and how much he still owes.

On a credit report, you will usually find 2 different types of debts – instalment and revolving. Instalment loans refers to debts that need to be paid up regularly such as home mortgages or car instalments. Revolving debts is just a jargon for debts that are raked up on an irregular basis such as credit card bills.

More importantly, you can find out if your tenants have been paying their loans like clockwork or are they always late to fork out their money. Rent payments will definitely be one of your renter’s biggest bills – If he often skips on paying his smaller bill, you can’t really trust him to pay his larger ones.

What are the Non-Finance Data that Your Credit Report will Reveal?

A lot of rental property owners have no idea that a landlord credit check is also valuable for getting hold of useful information that is not related to their credit history.

Many credit reporting agencies will dig up any dirt on your tenant’s criminal records and arrests. It’s crucial that you avoid accepting someone who is likely to carry out illegal activities on your rental property. In some countries, the courts may even hold the landlord responsible and seize your precious property.

If your tenant was ever evicted, your credit agency will also have records of that. More importantly, you will able to learn why he was evicted in the first place. Your rental property is a vital source of income and this is a powerful tool for screening possible nightmare tenants.

By Teo Zhenjie