OK, rant. We're tying to rent one of our properties. One of the things we obviously want is a credit Check. Experian offers a service, free to landlords where you can request a credit check for someone. Their system sends an email, the potential renter the responds, pays a fee and you get the report. Great, except it seems not too work.
About six weeks ago we had three young women who applied, we used the system and never got a response. We even sent follow ups, again via the system and nothing despite the fact that at least one of the girls said she'd done it. Now, there were some other red flags that caused us not to rent to them, but this was a major one.
Jump forward to now, and we have two (separate) potential renters. I sent the request yesterday, this morning the Experian system is showing no response so I sent follow ups. I've now confirmed via realtors that one of them has agreed and paid, but we get nothing. The Experian support system sucks. There is no live chat, just an option to email them that I've sent. On top of that if you call Experian their phone system has no option to talk to a human at all. All you can do is report Fraud or request your own credit report. Nothing else. This sucks. We're desperate to sort this out, we have two people interested right now and need to move, but this stupid system appears not to work with no effective customer service.
What do you other land lords use?
Rental management service
In reply to bentwrench :
That appears to be a full management service, we are already signed up with a realtor so can't switch at this time.
Can you gain some support from your realtor on getting the credit check.
My uninformed first thought is that your realtor is daily engaged in the sale and rental of houses and as such should posses resources and experience with getting the transaction completed. One of the pieces of this transaction is credit check.
In reply to John Welsh :
We're just using them to find a renter, not manage it. We've talked to several different realtors before we signed up and this seems to be normal practice. We had a different realtor a few years ago who did, but she really screwed up very very badly on the purchase of a property and we literally came within a few mins of loosing the sale and our deposit so I wont go any where near her again.
You wrote...
We're just using them to find a renter, not manage it.
Can you require that the realtor brings you renters complete with background?
In reply to John Welsh :
The answer was no, but I'm going to go back and telling them they have to do this as whatever we are trying obviously isn't working. Moral of the story, Experian sucks donkey balls with added horseradish.
My realtor always run prospective tenants for me. She just sent me the reports and I would vet them or not.
She does not manage the property, just finds me renters.
Driven5
SuperDork
12/16/18 12:17 a.m.
Not much first hand experience to speak of just yet, but based on my research, we'll probably be using one (or a combination of both) of these very soon.
https://www.mysmartmove.com
https://cozy.co
...And just as a general pointer to a good bit of reference material, for anybody who might be interested:
https://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/2013/01/27/tenant-screening/
Happy ending. We managed to get the credit scores and references, we chose an applicant and will sign the lease on Thursday or Friday.
That will make a happy holiday round here.
I've been using tennantbackgroundsearch.com. I think I basically just found it with a google search 3 years ago when we needed to screen our first tenants. We pay for the service and register the tenants when they apply. The service sends them an email to authorize a credit/background check and, once they agree, it goes through quickly. So quickly (minutes...seconds, even, maybe) that I know it's just an automated database search of some sort.
I wouldn't go so far as to recommend it. It's the only one I have used (I have used it on about 4 occasions). So far the experience has been hassle free and seems well worth the tiny bit of effort involved.
I can say, it's clear this system simply regurgitates whatever income the tenant reports verbatim on the report the landlord receives. It's evident to me no actual verification happens in regard to income (so...that'll be my job in the future...verify pay stubs or whatever).
Frankly...by the time someone applies, they're going to have already told me whether they have good enough credit or not. I'm just running the check as a verification and a fair housing policy formality. Once you talk face-to-face with a tenant and mention the credit/background check, that's a very pivotal moment in the whole transaction.
Join your local Landlord's Association. Membership usually gives access to their credit reporting service for a small fee.
Thanks for all the feedback guys. i went quiet for a couple of days as I didn't want to jinx things. But we are now sorted and moving forward. We have a check in hand for the deposit and a lease signing this Friday so we should be all set. I am bookmarking this thread just in case for the future though. I do hope that both places will be rented for a long time with no turnover though.
