Your Guide to Avoiding Bad Tenants
Bad tenants can end up costing landlords a lot of money. Not only do they can cause extensive damage to a property, but they can also rack up late rent payments and even skipped rent altogether. In some cases, landlords may not even realize they’re renting to a bad tenant until it’s too late – which is why it’s important for them to conduct a thorough background check on all potential renters. One way to do this is by checking eviction records directly with the courthouse. In this article, I will discuss how to access these records and what you should be looking for when you do. Let’s get started!
Why you should search for yourself rather than using a service?
Why can’t you use Transunion Rental Screening or another service, after all, Transunion is free for landlords?
When looking up evictions in the courthouse, you can find other information that will be pertinent to your background check, for example, judgments that were not reflected in the credit report, criminal activities, lawsuits against other landlords, or property management companies.
You’ve heard about the professional tenant, right? Well, checking the courthouse records will uncover tenants that are really good at using legal loopholes to live free.
I don’t want to scare you because these tenants are rare. I haven’t met many but maybe that’s because I’ve always done a very good background and eviction check.
Where should you start?
You need to search the court records in the last two counties where the tenant has lived. You should have that information from the tenant’s application. If you don’t have one, you can download our free rental application here.
Here is a step-by-step how to do it. Just keep in mind that each state and county is going to have a different setup. You can watch my video on how I search my local Courthouse for evictions as an example.
- Go to the County Courthouse website, just Google it.
- After you land on the website look for online searches, or/and court records links. You should be able to search as an anonymous user without registering.
- Search court records by name and birthday. Some Courthouse websites give you an option to search by a lot of criteria. Some would just give you an option to search by name.
- If you only get the option to search by name, you can narrow it down by the dates your applicant lived in that county. Also, you may have to open some of the lawsuits to check the parties’ information, making sure that the address belongs to your potential tenant.
- You can search only eviction records, or anything related to the applicant’s background. Please review the Fair Housing Act to make sure you are not discriminating against tenants.
I just want to point out very that that’s why many mistakes happen when background and eviction records are searched. If the tenant has a very common name and possibly the same birth date, some screening companies will give you a false result. It has happened to me. So when it does, I check the court records for myself to make sure it’s not a mistake.
What Information is Included in an Eviction Record?
An eviction record includes information about any formal eviction proceedings that have been filed against the applicant. The record will show whether or not the tenant was actually evicted from the property. It will also show how long ago the eviction occurred and whether or not the case was dismissed.
Implications of Having an Eviction Record
If an applicant has an eviction record, it can make it difficult to find new housing. Landlords and property managers often check eviction records as part of their tenant screening process. An eviction can also make it difficult to get approved for a lease. In most states, evictions are public records and can show up on background checks.
Many property management companies automatically reject applicants with eviction in the last seven years.
Some states like Oregon and California have new laws in place that allow tenants to have their evictions expunged or sealed.
Oregon Senate Bill 873 – eviction can be expunged after five years if there is no money due or if the eviction was dismissed.
California AB 2819 – limits access to court records and seals records unless the landlord objects and files a lawsuit within 60 days.
Other states like Massachusetts, Florida, Connecticut, Ohio and Wahington, D.C. introduced bills that were never passed.
This means that the eviction will show up on applicants’ records when landlords run a background check in most states.
Thank you for taking the time to read our article! We hope this was helpful!
