Choosing a Tenant
Q: How can landlords go about choosing tenants?
A: If you are offering a place to rent, have the prospective tenants complete a rental application. Standard application forms are usually available at stationery stores.
The two most important elements of the application are the employment history and the rental history. Get information for the past three or five years. Then contact each of the applicant's employers and landlords for that period. If the applicant has worked at the same job and lived in the same apartment for that time, you have as good an indication as possible of a quality tenant.
A prospective tenant who undergoes such a check might well be thankful. The landlord will have checked the building's other tenants as well, and so the neighbors will probably be reliable people.
Q: Are there any legal pitfalls in choosing a tenant?
A: Landlords need to take special care to treat all prospective tenants in the same way. The law prohibits many kinds of distinctions that landlords used to make in selecting tenants. Fair housing laws forbid discrimination on the basis of race, of course, but go far beyond that. See the section on fair housing.
Q: How else can landlords evaluate prospective tenants?
A: Many areas have companies that specialize in tenant records. They can tell you if someone has been evicted in the past or failed to pay the rent.
General credit bureaus can supply a history of credit payments to landlords if the prospective tenant authorizes a search of the records. This credit information will include the timeliness with which car and credit card payments have been made, bankruptcies, judgments against the tenant, and adverse information from other creditors.
Family Legal Guide
Copyright © 2000, 2002 American Bar Association
