There is an ongoing debate about the efficacy of renting to friends or even renting property to individuals who are known personally by the landlord or property owner. In some cases, the tenant’s basic character will already be known; but what about their legal and credit history? Ultimately, how a close family member is handled as a potential tenant will differ from a friend or acquaintance.

Renting to Family Members

There’s no doubt that renting to a family member will remove many of the variables from the situation, especially if it is a close family member. In these cases, their entire life history will be known, or it can be gleaned from other relatives.

The downside of this type of rental agreement is that they may be tempted to take advantage of the situation through paying the rent late or breaking the property rules set forth by the landlord. One way to avert this is to have them sign a lease just like any other renter. It should also be made crystal-clear from the outset that they will not be receiving any special treatment.

In fact, renting the property to a family member for a cost that is below current market rental rates could have expensive tax implications for the property owner. When in doubt, an accountant should be consulted.

Renting to Friends As Tenants?

Renting to friends involves more unknowns. Unless the person has been an ongoing friend since early childhood, there will probably be gaps in terms of what the landlord knows about their past. Friends may also be tempted to push boundaries when it comes to rental payment and treating the landlord’s rules and property with respect.

If a landlord is currently renting to friends, it is crucial to keep the arrangements businesslike. It’s also advisable to use a professional tenant screening service to ensure there isn’t anything troublesome in their past, such as credit problems or a criminal history. If they are taken on as a renter, they should also be required to sign the same lease as every other tenant.

Renting to Acquaintances

Renting to acquaintances involves even more unknowns than renting to friends. Considering acquaintances or “friends of friends” as tenants involves the most variables, but it will be easier to keep these relationships businesslike. These applicants should be professionally screened just as a stranger unknown to the landlord should be, as there will be much that is not known about them.

Whenever there are doubts or gaps in knowledge about a person’s history, tenant screening can help bring clarity about how to proceed. Applicants should be informed and give their consent to these criminal record searches and credit checks even when renting to friends; however, once performed, some of the guesswork will be removed from the rental screening process. Landlords can then make sound business decisions that result in more success and better landlord-tenant relations.

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An eviction record search and a criminal history search are two of the factors to look into during the tenant background search process.

The tenant background search process is essentially the last line of defense for landlords to help make sure that they fill vacancies with individuals who are most likely to be good tenants. The tenant background search process is designed to give landlords an idea of not only the past rental history of the person in question, but also a general idea of the type of tenant they will be. Eviction records are an extremely helpful resource. If you want to make sure that you’re getting the most valuable information during the process, you’ll want to take into account a few other considerations, such as a prospective tenant’s criminal history, credit score, and debt.

Criminal History

One of the most important considerations that you can make regarding a potential applicant is their criminal history. A landlord or property manager is responsible for providing a safe living environment for all of his or her tenants. To identify potential problem tenants, it is always important to do a detailed criminal history search as part of the tenant background search process.

Credit Score

The credit score is one of the most valuable pieces of data that a landlord can receive during the tenant background search process. Remember that a credit score can be a snapshot of a person’s entire financial life and will go above and beyond a simple rental history. Just because a potential tenant may have paid their rent on time for years doesn’t necessarily mean that they are on stable financial ground. If a potential tenant has a poor credit history, there may come a time where they begin paying rent late or not at all.

Debt

Another important consideration to make during the tenant background search process involves the many different types of debt that a person has accrued over the years. During the application process, it is likely that you also become aware of the total amount of income a person has, as part of the employment and salary verification. If you see the type of debt a person has accrued and can also see that they don’t necessarily have enough money to keep up with their bills for very long, you suddenly have valuable insight into a person’s situation that the credit score alone wouldn’t have told you.

In summary, there are several key considerations to take into account during the tenant background search process. These considerations, which include eviction records, national criminal record search, credit score, criminal history, and type of debt, will help a landlord to increase the odds of renting to a good tenant.

As a top nationwide provider of eviction records and criminal records, EvictionRecords.com has long been committed to ensuring that everyone in the United States gets access to the best, most reliable and most accurate information. With this in mind, we as a company have decided to expand our search offerings to three major U.S. territories: Puerto Rico Tenant Records, Guam Tenant Records and the Virgin Islands Tenant Records.

We recognize that many of our customers do business in these territories, or are accepting applications from citizens who have lived in these territories. Previously, accurate information was not available and we did not feel that our clients could make the best decisions based on the information we provided. In order to provide our customers with the peace of mind they deserve and the information they require, we now offer a variety of public records searches for these three territories including Puerto Rico tenant records.

Clients will find that the following Guam tenant records services are now available:

• Guam County Court Records Search is available for $24.95 per county and results take 5-7 business days.
• Guam Sex Offender Registry Check can be completed for free and results are provided immediately.

The following Puerto Rico tenant records services are now available:

• Puerto Rico Eviction Records Search can be completed for $19.95 and results are returned instantly. While limited data is available, we strive to provide our clients with the most accurate and detailed results possible.
• Puerto Rico County Court Records Search can be completed for $24.95 per county. Results will take between 5-14 business days.
• Puerto Rico Sex Offender Registry Check can be ordered for free and offers instant results.

The following Virgin Islands tenant records services are now available:

• Virgin Islands Eviction Records Check is available for $19.95 and offers instant results.
• Virgin Islands County Court Records Search is available for $24.95 per county and results take 1-3 business days.
• Virgin Islands Sex Offender Registry Check can be completed for free and results are instant.

We look forward to serving our clients and continuing to improve the services we offer at EvictionRecords.com.

Sometimes, a little change can go a long way. That was our goal when we decided to redesign both the EvictionRecords.com blog and criminal history records website. Our new tenant screening blog design is currently available, allowing users to quickly and easy devour the information that we have provided. The eviction history records blog has been optimized to work with all of the best social media networks including the Google+. This allows you to easily store the information that is most valuable to you and share interesting tidbits with your family, friends and coworkers.

In addition, we will roll out the redesign of the EvictionRecords.com website in early December. Our new website is created with the customer in mind and includes an expanded section with landlord resources. We wanted it to be both visually attractive and easy to use. The bottom line is, we want you to be able to get the vital tenant history records information that you need in the easiest and most convenient way possible. The new design of our website makes it easier than ever before to gain access to our online criminal history records.

At Eviction Records, we offer landlords and property managers a variety of different tenant background reports. Whether a person is looking for a local eviction history records search, or they want to do a national criminal history records search, we can get them the data they need. Our tenant history records are provided instantly to our customers, and are not only accurate but also very easy to read. This allows our customers to make sound decisions about their rental properties and secure the best tenants.

The Eviction Records website by Screening Intelligence LLC provides landlords and property owners with tenant records which include both eviction history records and criminal history records so that they can make the best decision possible for their business. For more information on our new blog design and upcoming website redesign, contact us today.

EvictionRecords.com is one of the top companies in the country for offering clients tenant records, eviction checks and criminal background records so that landlords and property managers can rest easy knowing that their tenants have been screened.  Now, our clients can connect with us in the ways that they want to through some of the most popular social media platforms on the web. Whether a customer prefers to get information about our company while pinning on Pinterest, or they prefer to read quick updates on their Twitter feed, we have created company pages that will provide relevant information about eviction checks and criminal background records to keep our customers up to date.

EvictionRecords.com has made sure to have a relevant presence on several important networks, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, StumbleUpon, Tumblr, Flickr, SlideShare and Google+. We know that our customers are busier than ever, and don’t necessarily want to go to our traditional web page to get the information they need about our company. When an item shows up on their Facebook News Feed and they are able to connect with us on our timeline, they instantly realize how easy and convenient our tenant screening services truly are for their global, connected and on-the-go lifestyle.

For more information on these exciting new social media pages, visit our social media connection page. We look forward to connecting with our customers in new and exciting ways, as well as providing our customers with the relevant content and information they are looking for about the services we provide. As your one-stop shop for eviction checks, tenant records and criminal background records, we know how important it is to touch base with our customers on a daily basis and keep them informed of our latest offerings. We are excited about this next step into the world of social media and everything it has to offer our clients.

For more information, please visit our Social Media for Tenant Screening Press Release.