How to Report a Good Rental History

A good rental history is often necessary to rent quality properties.

Maintaining a good rental history is an important part of finding your dream rental property. Many landlords require their tenants to have a strong record of successful past rentals. Your rental history consists of several elements, including your credit score, criminal record and references from past landlords. To report your rental history, you will need to provide property owners with the documents and materials that they request. Prospective tenants with a good rental history have nothing to fear from this process. In fact, thorough and verifiable documentation of past rentals will only strengthen your rental application.

Things You'll Need

• References from past landlords
• Credit score report
• Criminal background check

Instructions

1. List all the rental properties in which you have lived on a piece of paper. Find the telephone number or contact information for the landlords of each of these properties. If possible, contact these landlords yourself, inform them that you are applying to rent a house or apartment and politely ask them to serve as references. Speaking with these past landlords will help prepare them to vouch for your reliability as a tenant.

2. Provide your prospective landlord with the list you created in Step 1.

3. Offer to provide your prospective landlord with a copy of your credit history, if requested. You can get a credit report by filling out a form provided by your landlord. You may required to pay a fee.

4. Offer to obtain a criminal background check, if requested. Contact the local police in the communities where you have recently lived to request this procedure. You may need to pay a fee for this service.

Tips & Warnings

• If your landlord seems to have doubts regarding your rental history, you can suggest that she verifies your past rentals using a third-party tenant screening service. This proactive recommendation will underscore that you have nothing to hide.

• If you have a less-than-perfect rental record, or no rental history at all, offer to provide a co-signer.

• Tenant screening reports prepared by third-party organizations often contain errors and misrepresentations. If a prospective landlord indicates that there is a problem with such a report and you believe it to be an error, request specific details and carefully explain the error. Provide documentation supporting your contention, if possible.

References

• Wealth Steps: Tenant Background Check
• Apartment Guide: How Important Is Rental History?
• Yale Law Journal: Tenant Screening Thirty Years Later: A Statutory Proposal To Protect Public Records