As a landlord or a property manager, you want to make sure that only the right tenants make it into the rental property you own or are in charge of renting. One of the best ways to learn about the trustworthiness of a potential tenant is to run a credit report to see just how good they are at managing their money and paying their bills on time. But are landlords allowed to perform a credit report during the residential screening process? The answer is yes.
The key to running a credit check on a prospective tenant is to make sure you have written permission from the applicant. This permission can be granted via a clause in the rental application or as a completely separate document. You will also need to gather the applicant’s full name, address, social security number or individual taxpayer identification number, and date of birth.
Credit checks are a great source of information, but they shouldn’t be the only deciding factor as to whether or not you rent your property to a tenant. Remember that some good tenants might have fallen on hard times in the past while some bad tenants might have supplied you with false information. Furthermore, younger tenants may not have had enough time to establish a credit history yet.
