Renting out property, whether it is commercial or residential, can be a bit risky. Even though there are a number of things you can do to protect yourself, you never know exactly how a tenant will behave, or how responsible they will be with your property. In addition, just because a tenant may have shown some sort of stability in the past in terms of paying his/her bills on time, does not mean circumstances won’t change as they often do. For this reasons it may be a wise choice to perform a series of investigations prior to renting out your property. One of the things you might consider is conducting a criminal background check on whatever parties are involved. You may wonder, “Can tenants make you pay for a background check?”. The short answer is yes, they can ask that you pay for whatever investigations you wish to perform, but there is a way around that. Many landlords ask for what is called an “application fee”. This fee generally covers the cost of performing a credit check, as well as a criminal background check. This application fee should be non-refundable. This means that whether or not the results are favorable, the tenant will have in essence paid for the inquiries, inadvertently.
For the most part, anyone who has a bad criminal history or a poor credit score will steer clear of applying for any property when they know they have something undesirable on their record. What this means is that just notifying prospective tenants that there will indeed be an investigation, may help you weed out the bad apples from the start. In addition there are also still some honest people in this world, meaning, a person may tell you what is included in their history before going any further. A lot of landlords find this quality to be admirable but you will need to form your own opinion on the matter, and decide if you are willing to take a risk on that person. At the end of the day, you are the one who will incur any costs associated with making a poor decision in terms of choosing a tenant, so it is advisable that you exercise caution when renting your property/properties out.