If you’ve been a rental property manager or investor long enough, you may have come across risky tenants staying or looking to rent your place. Irresponsible and unpleasant tenants could give you a headache by not paying the rent on time (or at all), and leaving your property damaged; maybe even bothering your other ‘good’ tenants.
It doesn’t have to be this way for all the landlords. What if we told you that you could assess your tenant, and make a choice whether or not you’d allow them to stay at your place? Yes, you are within your rights as a landlord to run a credit check on potential renters, as long as they are aware that this is something you plan to do.
Hence, Rumah-i, your ideal mobile-friendly home renting platform; is ready to be of service to you by providing extensive features, including a credit assessment of the tenants on the app. Before we move on to anything else, let’s have a brief tour on the questions of credit checking.
So, what is credit checking?
A credit check is when a company looks at your information from your credit report to understand your financial behaviour. As part of credit checks, companies will observe how much credit you have, how you manage it and whether or not you paid them on time.
Hence, a tenant credit check is a simple way to verify the qualifications of potential renters and flag off applicants who may have held back some pertinent information.
How does credit checking help landlords avoid bad tenants?
Firstly, landlords need to know that they are not renting their property to an imposter. With that said, credit checking service companies such as Experian would highlight that a good credit score includes an identity confirmation. Tenants can register themselves at their current address, and this will reflect on their credit record. Some services would also require an income reference to confirm tenants’ employment and income status.
Besides that, credit checking can help landlords to avoid irresponsible tenants by checking the potential renter’s public records. By going through their public records, landlords can identify whether or not the potential renter has prior evictions or criminal history. Although it may be hard to obtain these records, evictions and criminal conduct will affect a tenant’s credit.
Poor credit records can be a sign of bad rental history. These records are especially important to deter any illegal activities going on at your rental property. With that said, credit checking services provide landlords with tenants’ risk score; to examine the level of risk when letting a property to a tenant.
Besides that, credit checking can also help landlords to deter renters who constantly pay their rent late or not at all. A credit check during the tenancy screening process is the landlord’s best bet to see if the tenant can manage their payment well. Through the credit check, landlords can see if the tenants have the habit of paying their rent on time, and check if they have a decent credit score.
With that said, credit checks can also see if the tenant has a history of debt, bankruptcies, collections, or other negative remarks on their records. In other words, it can help landlords do a thorough financial check on the potential renters. Hence, a landlord can tell about the financial commitment of a tenant through his credit report that is impacted by late or lack-of payments.
Not only that, but some credit checking services also allow for previous address and landlord references. This feature lets the current landlord get feedback from the tenant’s previous landlord. With that, landlords can get useful information to check the tenant’s reliability and living conditions.
With all that said, landlords can utilize credit checking services such as Experian to see defaulter’s information. Thus, this portal allows landlords with increased chances to retrieve outstanding rental and assess the credit scores of each tenant. From there, landlords can decide whether or not to rent their property to a particular tenant. All this information at hand will certainly cause the tenants to be more mindful and disciplined about maintaining a good payment and credit record.
Hence, it is great if landlords can make use of credit checks on their potential tenants. A tenant background check requirement is one key to being a successful and profitable landlord with good tenants. Having said that, Rumah-i also has this useful feature where landlords can do credit assessment on their tenants; all with a swipe of a finger.
Through the Rumah-i credit assessment feature, landlords can check the tenant’s credit scores, as well as their risk grade. It would be an indicator for the landlords about the level of risk potential tenants’ bring when they choose to rent a property there. On top of that, Rumah-i also allows landlords to see the probability of default done by the tenant. With all this information at hand, it has become extremely convenient for landlords to assess the credit scores of each tenant without taking too much time and effort.
Overall, landlords can never go wrong with credit checks. Although there may be some fees incurred for the credit checking procedure, this fee cannot be compared to what financial burden landlords have to bear when renting their property to irresponsible and unpleasant tenants.
This is where Rumah-i plays its role by offering you a one-stop solution to a hassle-free property rental management. Check out Rumah-i today for a comprehensive service and solution for a smooth rental process.