How to Run Credit Checks on Prospective Tenants

Video Transcript

"I'm Damon Thompson, I've been a landlord for over ten years and I have five multi unit buildings. This is how to run a credit check on prospective tenants. First thing you want to do when your prospective tenant shows up is get a credit application filled out. It's going to ask for their social security number, any financial information, personal information, personal references, you want to make sure you get that completely filled out from your potential tenant. The next thing you want to do is charge a fee for this because when you run the person's credit history, the services that you run their history through are going to charge you the fee. So you want to pass this fee on to your prospective tenant. After you do that you're going to contact the credit bureaus, you're going to get, there are three major credit reporting agencies and you're going to get a read out of what the agencies have in terms of the information on this individual. Then you going, this is pretty much going to give you an on paper view of the person's payment history, you know, how well they're doing and the likelihood of them paying you as a tenant. After this, you want to discuss these results with your prospective tenant, if there are things in the credit report that you have questions on, you can just go ahead and ask them and most of the time they clear them up really easily. Then finally you want to make a decision based on the credit report. You want to have this information, coupled this with the information that you got from your prospective tenant, make an informed decision and hopefully you have a really good tenant living in your property. I'm Damon Thompson and that's how to run a credit check on prospective tenants."