we have a rental property (our old house) and our renters are moving out early (GRRR) and we are talking to new potential tenants.
as part of the background, are we allowed to find information on FB? and use that to ask questions if there are inconsistencies?
I don't want to get in trouble
thanks!
Re: nbr: questions on background checks...
I know plenty of people who rent who have good credit, being a renter =/= bad to moderate credit.
If they are stupid enough to have a non private FB I don't know why you wouldn't be able to look at it.
I never said it equals bad to moderate credit but we have yet to have even one renter even apply who has "good" or "excellent" credit. I am sure they exist. That is why I said "most" not "all". But if we are going to get really technical around here I would wager that most people in the general population have moderate (or average) to bad credit - for whatever reason within or without their control. Otherwise what is the point of having "good" credit if your credit isn't any better than the next borrowers? Its this everyone deserves good credit for being a human mentality that got us into the recession. And I didn't even tell her to weed out those with poor credit or that those with poor credit would even be poor renters. I was offering my real life experience which may or may not be useful to a relatively new landlord who probably does not want to eat mortgage payments on an empty house.
Because someone has to be the person with good or excellent credit. This is such a bizarre argument. I don't think I ever said everyone deserves good credit, I simply pointed out that saying that 'usually' renters have bad or moderate credit is not necessarily true. I have no idea why your renters all do, but it doesn't mean everyone will have that experience.
Right, like if they say they don't smoke or have pets but public fb pics show they smoke and have pets then I don't know why you wouldn't be able to question that. Although if you found a discrepancy like that I would just move to the next applicant.
Our Blog