Are you a landlord anxious to be sure the person you are considering as a potential tenant meets your expectations, pays the apartment rent in time, doesn’t cause damage to your property, and poses no risk to other tenants? Then this information is for you. Whether it’s your first time you are letting someone in, or whether you are landlord with years of experience backed by wise rental policy written by experienced attorney,

you surely don’t doubt you need to run some sort of a background check on your prospective tenant before you actually sign a contract. Most landlords will just resort to one of many background screening services available and ask professional investigators to collect the information for them from an array of public records relying upon professional expertise of private investigators or information brokers they choose to hire.

Those in their turn would normally check your applicant’s background history against numerous databases looking for possible criminal history, verifying their current (and sometimes past) employment status, getting references from previous landlords, and, of course, ordering credit report from either one or all three major American credit reporting agencies.

All these, of course, after getting a written permission from the applicant consenting to submit to this sort of background check. This done, are you now ready to rent? Wait for a moment and read the background check report carefully. I bet, in many cases you’ll find out  the said report lacking one small, but rather important piece of information.

It is about their eviction history. Do they have eviction record? If you are a responsible person and businessman, you’ll insist on running this small search as well. If the report is based on the subject’s credit profile only, eviction, if any, will show there only for the period of 7 years, as defined by law. After 7 years’ term eviction is erased from all credit reports. But if you do a public records search, it will show forever. Only extensive background check that has included court records search will give you the true picture.

Eviction remains in the public record forever. A person can drive a good car, be employed at a well paid job, have excellent credit score, but still… have eviction history. Past evictions can be due to keeping pets in restricted areas, for sub-leasing or letting someone else to live with him/her, inviting noisy or violent guests etc. Keep that in mind, for an eviction process can be both lengthy and capable of turning your life into nightmare.