As the saying goes, you can never judge a book by its cover, and the same is true either of professional or personal relationships. In the case of the former, landlords and employers often have to hire people without really knowing anything about them and this poses a security risk almost immediately.
If you find yourself in this position, and have had issues related to tenants not paying on time or dishonest employees, one of the best ways by which you can turn your doubts to certainty is to run a background check on their credit report.
While the information you get from this report is very different from that of a criminal check, there is still a lot to be learned by looking through a person’s financial information especially if they have a bad credit score.
Why does this matter to landlords in particular?
It’s simple. If your tenant isn’t financially strong, there is a greater risk of him or her not being able to pay the rent while living on your property. If you have doubts about his or her financial standing, there’s a chance that you will find something incriminating about him or her in doing an eviction search too.
So if you had this information before you produced a contract for the tenant to sign, you would know much better to avoid selecting this candidate as a prospective one for your property.
After all, who wants a tenant who doesn’t have money to pay the rent?
In addition to using a credit report to find information about a candidate, conducting a search on his or her police records is also an excellent idea especially if you suspect something is wrong. Backing a hunch can turn out to save you a lot of time, energy, money and most of all, emotional frustration.