Hi Friend,
I hope you are doing well.
Over the past several years I have helped many people buy their first rental property.
During this time, I have also noticed that there are a series of common questions that are asked by new real estate investors.
One of the common questions that always comes up by new real estate investors is:
Do I need to check the tenant’s credit?
The answer to this my friend is, yes.
Any experienced real estate investor will tell you that if you are not careful with determining a tenant’s credit history, you can find yourself in a world of trouble.
In the early days, I made the mistake of not checking a tenant’s credit once, and it did not result in good things. The tenant did not pay rent, was troublesome, threw parties at night, smoked weed, disturbed neighbours, piled up garbage in the yard, and swore at me. Needless to say, I ended up evicting the tenant.
All of this could have been avoided had I simply checked the tenant’s credit before hand, as this would have given me a further insight into the tenant’s previous habits.
Beginners make mistakes. I have made mistakes myself and I know countless experienced real estate investors who have made these same mistakes.
I run a lot of workshops for new real estate investors and I have found that the question regarding ‘checking a tenant’s credit’ always comes up at these workshops.
A while back, I had to take a step back and ask myself why this question kept on coming up.
After some careful thought, I concluded that this question came up time and time again by new real estate investors simply because:
They did not KNOW HOW TO check a prospective tenant’s credit.
The fact that they did not know how to check credit, prevented them from even attempting to check credit.
The bottom line here is that people are generally lazy. If there is an easy way out of doing something, people will take that easy route.
The easy way out for a new real estate investor to NOT check the credit of their tenant is by NOT CHECKING IT! Simply put.
The good news here my friend is that checking a tenant’s credit is not difficult.
Now, there are countless Credit Check companies that you can search online via Google.
You can try finding credit check companies by typing in things into the Google Search bar like:
- credit check companies for tenants
- credit check companies in {your country}
- how to check a tenant’s credit
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