One question we frequently get at TenantMagic is “what makes TenantMagic better than the rest of the tenant screening companies out there?” With so many different tenant screening companies, we understand that looking for the best screening service might be difficult. For that reason, we decided to give you our guide on choosing the best tenant screening companies. Today’s post we will look at the importance of comprehensive screenings.
Comprehensive screenings
One important aspect of tenant screening is gathering all relevant information about the tenant. I have spoken to many landlords and agents that use a credit report to qualify a tenant and sometimes they accept a credit report provided by the applicant.
There are 2 reasons why this is bad.
- Credit reports give you part of the picture. Eviction reports and criminal reports ore very important to properly evaluate a potential tenant.
- As I have written in a previous post, fake credit reports can be purchased on-line. Here is a site that blatantly promotes them. https://fake-credit-score.pdffiller.com/
Many services offer combinations of credit reports, criminal reports, and eviction reports, and others offer credit and criminal reports, with eviction reports as an additional add-on cost. TenantMagic includes eviction reports in the screening report giving owners and agent comprehensive information to make a highly informed decision.
TenantMagic goes one step further after the owner or agent receives the reports. There are instances when the criminal received from the courts require further explanation. TenantMagic will conduct additional research on criminal reports if further clarification is required.
Additionally, eviction courts do not use social security numbers. This can result in false positives with common names. The TenantMagic program resolves false positives by comparing addresses where the applicant was known to live as reported by the credit bureaus with the addresses where a person with that name was evicted. If there is a match, then we know it was the applicant that was evicted.
In future posts regarding Choosing the Best Tenant Screening Services, I will discuss customer service and ease of use for both the owner/agent and the applicant.