Understanding Your Rights When Screening Prospective Tenants

The tenant screening process is a minefield of stress for tenants, but it is no picnic for landlords, either.  A landlord’s nightmare is an apartment that stays vacant month after month while the bills continue to come due, or at least, you think that it’s the worst-case scenario until you get stuck with a tenant who refuses to pay rent but also refuses to budge until you go through the entire, costly process of eviction, as due process of law dictates.  You might wish to fill vacant units by accepting every applicant who shows up with a smile and enough cash for a security deposit, but this can easily backfire.  You will be out much more than one month’s rent if your new tenant assaults a neighbor and goes to prison, while the victim of the assault sues you for negligence for not properly screening applicants before renting units on your property to them.  Of course, the law protects tenants from screening practices that would enable landlords to refuse to rent to them for discriminatory reasons.  For help developing best practices for screening tenants while complying with pre-housing background check laws, contact a Bronx real estate attorney.

New York Tenant Screening Dos and Don’ts

Here are some guidelines for running background checks on prospective tenants before deciding whether to accept their lease applications:

• Do run a criminal background check before handing over the keys to a new tenant. If you don’t, you could be legally liable if the tenant commits a crime against another tenant on your property.
• Don’t run a criminal background check unless you are serious about renting to the applicant. Criminal background checks cost money.
• Do hire a reputable background check company to conduct the background check. The company should be approved by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for this purpose.
• Don’t automatically disqualify applicants whose background checks don’t come up as “criminal history.” A tenant who pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor vandalism charge 20 years ago is probably not a safety risk, and neither is someone who once got arrested but was never convicted.
• Do conduct a credit check. Reassure tenants that it is a soft pull, not a hard pull.  This way you can separate the tenants who are nervous about credit checks because of garden variety financial struggles from the ones who are cagey because they have something to hide.
• Don’t automatically exclude tenants who have limited credit history because they are new to the workforce. Young people and recent immigrants are not necessarily worse tenants than applicants with an established credit history.

Be transparent with your tenants about the screening process at every stage, including why you did not accept a tenant.  You will reduce the chances of a legal dispute and start the landlord-tenant relationship on good terms.

Schedule a Confidential Consultation With a Bronx Real Estate Attorney

A real estate lawyer can help you navigate the process of screening potential tenants.  Contact Cavallo & Cavallo in the Bronx, New York to set up a consultation.

Source:

azibo.com/blog/how-to-do-a-background-check-on-a-tenant