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Do You Know How Safe Your Roommate Is?
Dan The Roommate Man
Landlord - Tenant Common Sense
When choosing the perfect roommate, whether you are the tenant or
the landlord, a little common sense and due diligence should be a
pre-requisite before making your decision. Several factors come
into play for both the landlord and the tenant.
As a landlord, you are bringing a relative stranger into your
household who could prove to be the perfect way to offset your
costs, or turn into an additional expense for you to bear. First
of all, you will want to judge the prospective tenant's fiscal
responsibility. The information to do this can be gathered by
requesting a consumer report (credit report) on this individual.
To do this you will need to have a signed authorization from this
individual and contact any number of consumer reporting agencies.
To supplement the consumer report the data you will obtain from
the report, it is a good idea to also contact your prospective
tenant's previous landlords for references and rental history.
They will give you a good idea as to exactly what kind of person
this is and what behavior that you might expect from them. Your
next step will be to check the individual's criminal record. "You
certainly would not want to introduce a thief into your
household. You can accomplish this by contacting either the
county's court clerk in which they lived and possibly surrounding
metropolitan county courts or contact a background investigative
company to perform this for you." says Charles Slagle, Chief
Investigator for NCRS, Inc. Finally it would be wise to verify
their employment. Ensure that they give you a main number to
business so that you can verify that it is a business you have
reached and not just one of their friends that they may have
posing as their supervisor for them. It also does not hurt to
verify the number through your local yellow pages or information.
I have found personal references to be of little or no use since
a prospective tenant will rarely give personal reference that
would be negative. These things and a bit of common sense should
help produce a fruitful tenant for you.
When you are the tenant looking for a roommate/landlord the
criteria changes slightly, but the basic concepts remain the
same. "You want to ensure that you are partnering with a
creditworthy landlord who is as fiscally responsible as they
desire for you to be," said Mr. Slagle. Financial ability is as
important to them as it should be to you. You will need to make
certain that the roommate/landlord has the ability financially to
keep the roof over your head and to maintain the utilities.
Regardless if you are able to pay your portion of the bills and
rent, the responsibility falls on the roommate/landlord to
complete the payment. Your next concern is the possibility of a
criminal record on the part of the landlord. Todd Lamb, President
of Trinity Research added, "For safety's sake you would not want
a landlord that has been convicted of an assault or a
crime." You can investigate their background in the same manner
as the landlord would check on yours or you may want to utilize
one of many websites that offer to do this for you.
Criminalbackground.com is our site of choice for their economical
and easy to use site. Also, whenever I have a question a staff
member is always around to help by phone or email." Said Sheryl
Pennington, Property Manager for Carlton Court in Dallas, Texas.
So, regardless if you are the tenant or the landlord looking for
a roommate, taking some time to research the prospect can yield a
more productive roommate relationship.
friendly advice from
Dan The Roommate Man
www.roommateexpress.com
Dan The Roommate Man has helped people find good roommates since
1989.
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