Sections 1-12 are now up.

Click the Tenant Screening tab at the top of the page… more to follow soon

For clarity, a few quick reminders:

This was written back when I ran background checks for fun and profit. My audience at the time were my clientele–small business owners and  nonprofit organizations such as softball leagues, soccer teams, churches, and volunteer fire departments.

Some of this material does *not* apply so much to tenant screening, but I’ve included it anyway on the off-chance that someone other than landlords might wander over and take a peek.

A few of these sections look rather simple… that’s because it *is* simple. Public records are just that— public. It’s knowing which records to check, where to look and what to look out for that’s tricky. Once you have the contact information for your state and county, you can whip these out in no time. There’s a learning curve, but its not that stinkin’ steep.

Tenant Screening/Background checking is something I do not outsource–ever.

Here’s why:

Let’s say someone named Joe Smith applies to rent your lovely little duplex. You go online, pay your $25 for a nationwide criminal records check and it comes back negative. You heave a sigh of relief and sign up your felon.

Do you have any idea which database your online service checked? How often the database is updated? Did someone type in Joe Smith, and scan the thousands of positives? Did they look for aliases? Verify by birthdate? Etc?

We are not the police. We are not the government. We do not have access to the same background and criminal record info plastered all over CSI. Huge databases are notoriously inaccurate– your chances of finding criminal history are much, much higher when you access what *is* available yourself.

A bunch of the material below is explanatory in nature. The forms actually walk you through the process. I haven’t figured out how to post the forms in a readily accessible format. Hopefully, that will happen very soon. If anyone has any ideas, please shoot me an email cmbrz@conniebrz.com or post a comment and I’ll get back to you.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Tags: , background, background check, background checks, nonprofit, nonprofit organizations, screening, small business, tenant, tenant screening, tenants