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For your rental property to pay off, you need to keep reliable tenants in every unit. This means it’s essential to treat every tenant application as a careful business decision.
One of the biggest opportunities you have as a landlord to collect good background information from prospective renters is with a rental history report. Along with a credit report and a background check, a rental history report gives you a full picture of an applicant’s past behavior, which can help you make informed decisions about when to offer a lease and when to pass.
What Is On a Rental History Report?
According to a survey by SmartMove, the top 2 concerns landlords have when assessing prospective tenants are payment problems and eviction history. A rental history report can provide valuable data on both. Although laws vary by state, most rental history reports include records of evictions for the past seven years.
A rental history report will also provide information about an applicant’s past residences, rental rates, dates of occupancy, payment history, and adherence to lease requirements. In some cases, the report can be a more meaningful metric for determining a tenant’s ability to pay than a credit report, since a rental history focuses specifically on rent payments.
The report will also include notes from the applicant’s past landlords, which could call out issues such as disputes with neighbors, criminal activity, or property damage. You’ll have access to contact information for those landlords too, which you can use to verify the information.
Why a Rental History Report Is Important for Screening
Think of the rental history as a kind of report card for your future tenant. It’s your responsibility as a landlord to ensure you’re keeping your building and its residents safe by thoroughly vetting anyone who will have a key.
By getting a rental history report, you’ll have background on how applicants treat their neighbors, prior landlords, and adhere to finances to help fill in the gaps not covered by credit and background checks.
How to Verify Rental History
Verifying the information on a rental application takes a combination of legwork and documentation. In the case of a rental history report, once you have the information on paper, it’s time to connect with the applicant’s existing and past landlords to verify it.
Keep in mind that just calling the tenant’s current landlord isn’t enough. In extreme cases, a current landlord may be motivated to lie if it means getting a terrible tenant out of their building. Past landlords, however, have nothing to lose by being truthful, so it’s important to solicit feedback from both.
Contacting an applicant’s former landlords doesn’t have to be an arduous process. Some services will even send out emails on your behalf to request basic information. If you choose to make the phone calls yourself, it’s generally advised to ask the following questions:
- Can you confirm [applicant] rented from you?
- Did [applicant] pay his or her rent on time?
- Did [applicant] reasonably take care of the property?
- Was the unit clean and in good order when [applicant] left?
- Was [applicant] disruptive to neighbors or other tenants?
You might also consider asking questions to get a read on the landlord’s overall feelings about the tenancy, such as “Did you ask the tenant to renew? If not, why?” or “Would you rent to this tenant again?”
Hopefully, all of the feedback will be on the up-and-up, but if something about the conversation feels fishy, don’t ignore your concerns. If you suspect the landlord reference is a fake (common scams involve enlisting a family member or friend to impersonate a landlord), try asking a few more questions to test how well he or she knows the rental business, or if they can correctly answer questions about the rental rate the applicant supposedly paid at their residence. With a rental history report, you’ll have this information in front of you to know if they’ve answered correctly.
If the applicant doesn’t have a prior landlord to list, or if you’d feel more comfortable with an additional reference, you can always ask for an employer reference. Company information is easier to research and confirm online. For example, you can often check a manager’s name and role by looking her up on LinkedIn or on the “Our Team” page on the company’s website. A credit report, W-2, or pay stubs should also verify the applicant’s place of business and length of employment so you won’t have to take the applicant’s word for it.
Tenant Screening Made Easy With Avail
Doing your due diligence to land a solid tenant can feel like a lot of work, but it doesn’t have to be. Using a tenant screening checklist and choosing a tenant screening report offered by a reputable source like Avail can simplify the process, saving you time and giving you more confidence in your rental decisions.
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Let’s say you’re apartment hunting and you’ve found a gem. It wasn’t easy and you’re cutting it closer than you’d like to your move-out date, but the place is perfect. Now you just need to pass the landlord’s screening process.
Most renters know their credit score (or how to pull a report) and can provide the necessary security deposit and personal references, but there’s one more big piece to the puzzle: your rental history report.
If you don’t know what’s on your rental history report, you run the risk of being rejected for an apartment because of mistaken information or issues that look problematic on paper, but could easily be explained.
To be confident you’re putting your best application forward, it’s a good idea to get a copy of your rental history in advance and review its contents, keeping your potential landlord’s perspective in mind.
What Is a Rental History Report?
A rental history report is information on your past rental housing. The report usually includes past rental addresses, contact information of former landlords or property managers, the dates you lived in those rentals, the rent amounts, information on missed payments or damages, and any prior evictions.
Often, landlords will pair a rental history report with a rental application to verify your employment and income, plus a credit report and background check.
How to Check Your Rental History
The Fair Credit Reporting Act entitles consumers to free copies of a variety of speciality consumer reports, including credit and rental history reports. Privacyrights.org provides a list of companies that prepare such reports for landlords, but because there are so many different groups generating reports, it’s wise to ask your landlord which company they use and then request that specific report.
You can also create a renter profile on Avail. Our system lets you enter all of your information at once (and even authorize a credit and background check) to generate a comprehensive report that you can save and share with landlords anytime, for free. You’ll be able to see the same information that landlords can see, allowing you some transparency and control over your rental history information.
How to Use Your Rental History Report
When reviewing your rental history, the first step is to check for accuracy. Are all of your previous addresses, landlords’ names, and dates of occupancy correct? What about the rental rates? This one may not seem problematic if it’s incorrect, but many landlords refer to past rental rates to help determine if tenants will be able to afford to pay the rent reliably and on time at a new unit.
If you find an error, you can file a dispute with the reporting company. Typically, this needs to be done in writing, with documentation to support your claim. The company will complete a review of the dispute and either correct the report or, if they believe their information is accurate, leave it as-is. In the latter case, you can append a note to the report that will be included when others request it in the future.
If the information is correct, but negative, you’re not out of luck. For example, you could contact the landlord who filed a negative report to see if you can resolve the issue. If there was damaged property, you might be able to work out an agreement to reimburse the landlord for the cost of repairs in exchange for their agreement to contact the reporting company with updated information.
Finally, review the report from the perspective of your potential landlord. A gap in rental payment history, for instance, could give a landlord pause. If that gap simply reflects a period where you moved home to save money, providing that information upfront can help your landlord feel more comfortable.
How Knowing Your Rental History Benefits You
You can’t get ahead of issues you don’t know exist. Just as you wouldn’t list a professional reference on your resume without knowing what that person would say about you, you don’t want a report you’ve never seen to be the deciding factor in whether or not you qualify for an apartment.
Even if you leave the rental market and become a homeowner, your rental history matters. According to the National Home Buyer’s Alliance, rental history reports are a key piece of information that banks review to determine whether you’re approved for a mortgage.
Manage Your Rental History With a Renter Profile
When applying for an apartment in an in-demand market, being the first to file an application can be essential to land a lease. Save yourself time by providing all the information needed for a rental history report, credit report, and background check at once.
Avail will safely store your info so it’s ready to fire off to multiple landlords with a single click, and you can rest assured knowing what landlords are seeing when you apply to an apartment — while saving money by avoiding multiple rental application fees.
Get started with an Avail renter profile by logging in or signing up for free.
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