How to Protect Yourself with Tenant Background Checks

September 25, 2025

Tenant background checks are essential when it comes to protecting your property and investments when it comes to choosing new tenants. Here’s what you need to know about checking a rental applicant’s past housing history, including what to look for and other recommendations.

What is a Tenant Background Check?

Tenant background checks go by many names, like rental background check, renter screening, tenant screening, landlord verification, etc. but regardless of what the property manager or landlord calls it, the tenant background check refers to the review of information used by landlords to evaluate and verify a potential tenant’s background, financial qualifications, and/or rental history when considering them for a leasing decision.

Rental history typically comes from a variety of different sources, like:

Information from the applicant directly, like past addresses and landlord details
Information from previous landlords and reference checks, like damages, evictions, late payments, security deposit information, etc.
Information from a background check company, like credit checks and past eviction reports

Landlords can go through these sources to get a better sense of their potential new tenants in order to protect themselves before they lease out their property so they have a more complete picture of their new tenants, and don’t face tough situations like lease violations, late/missed payments, and evictions.

Why Run Tenant Background Checks?

There are several reasons for getting a detailed background on potential tenants before signing a lease or rental agreement. These may include:

1. Is your applicant who they say they are? Make sure you know!

Tenant screening can help you make sure your applicant is actually who they say they are. Identity verification may help you confirm that the reports and documents you’re looking at belong to the potential tenant in front of you.

2. Are you protecting yourself, your property, and investment?

As a landlord, the last thing you want to deal with is a tenant who may destroy your property or you may have to evict. Tenant background screening can help you get a better picture of how your rental applicant has behaved in the past, and check things like criminal history, eviction history, and what previous landlords have reported about the tenant. All of this can help give you a better picture of how a rental applicant might act in your property.

3. Will you get payments on time? Confirm your applicant’s credit history.

Just because someone has a sufficient income, doesn’t mean they are responsible with money. In addition to confirming your potential tenant makes enough money, it’s also wise to check if they have a history of paying their debts on time.

A credit check can help show your tenant’s financial track record, and help you understand how they’ve handled past financial obligations. This might help you predict how they might approach your monthly rental payment.

4. Can your applicant afford the rental payment?

One of the top concerns of landlords is payment problems, including late payments and not paying rent at all. To avoid scenarios where you may have to evict a tenant for nonpayment, which can be costly, financial screening helps to confirm the potential applicant’s income.

Note: Be sure to abide by income verification for your state; in certain states, landlords can request bank or payroll statements, but each state is subject to their own laws around this.

What do Tenant Background Checks Include?

Tenant background checks can include a variety of data about a potential tenant’s financial, personal, employment, and rental background. Here are the common types of tenant background checks.

Financial Verifications:

Tenant Credit Check: Looks into the applicant’s financial habits to help better understand their relationship with money, including their history of paying debts on time, any credit check concerns, and likelihood that they will pay their rent on time based on their past behavior.
Employment & Salary Confirmation: This may include W-2, tax returns, 1099, and/or letters or verification directly from the employer, and confirms that the applicant makes the salary that they say they make.

Rental History:

Previous Landlord Reference Checks: You can contact a rental applicant’s previous landlords or property management team to learn more about how they acted as a renter, including if they paid their rent on time, left the property in a good condition, and was respectful (or disruptive) to other tenants.
Past Eviction Check: Checking for prior evictions, can help protect yourself against a potentially massive financial hit, as evictions can cost between $1000 and $5000+.

Personal Background Checks:

Criminal Background Check: Checking their criminal record can not only protect your property, but also promote safety.
Identity Verification: This helps you confirm your tenant is actually who they say they are.

What’s the cost and turnaround time for tenant checks?

A typical tenant check can cost between $30 and $50, depending on what information you want to screen for.

A typical check includes a criminal background check, including any criminal history and sex offender registry search, tenant credit check (ResidentScore ™ from Transunion), an eviction check, and references.

You may also want to add (sometimes at an additional cost):

Bankruptcy, Liens and Judgements (BLJ) check
Social media check which provides some insights from individuals social media activity and postings.

It can take 1-3 days to get a complete report.

Additionally, individuals can run this report on their own and provide it to prospective landlords.

What’s the Return on Investment (ROI) for a tenant check?

Considering safety, evictions and other costs, most importantly, the monthly rental and your property value, the ROI could be almost infinite if it helps you picking / selecting a good tenant.

To get an idea of how frequent evictions take place, according to EvictionLab.com, in the 10 states and 36 cities they track, landlords have filed for 1,025,512 evictions over the last 12 months, and 78,134 evictions over the last month. Having to evict a tenant can be both stressful and costly! Saving yourself the hassle by choosing a good tenant can protect your time, energy, and money in the long run!

Don’t take a tenant on their word alone. Examine your rental applicant from multiple angles with quick, flexible tenant screening, which is coming soon through Kredifi. To learn more and get started, please reach out to sales@kredifi.com