Do Corporate Housing Landlords Consistently Run Credit and Background Checks on Tenants?

Admin
Published Date: 2012-03-14

We’re continuing our blog series to share key findings from the 2011 “By Owner” Corporate Housing Report, an annual survey sponsored by CHBO to better understand the “by owner” rental marketplace. The latest report was released in January 2012 based on 2011 trends. Credit and background checks are quickly becoming an interesting topic for corporate housing landlords. With more people bearing bad credit because they’ve gone through bankruptcy or foreclosure on a previous property, it’s become more clear that all landlords must be on-guard with the individual who rents their properties. In today’s environment, credit reports are often used to see the bigger picture about a prospective tenant. In looking at a renter who has poor credit, you need to ask more questions to understand if the potential tenant is likely to be a repetitive credit offender, or if it was just a one-time occurrence. In 2010, 26% of respondents said “yes,” they always run credit or background checks. A larger amount, 32%, said ”no,” they never run reports. However, for 2011, we divided this question into two separate questions because there is a significant difference between a credit check and a background check. With that said, we found very little variance between the two topics, which surprised us. We expected credit checks to be higher than background checks; yet, for all statistical variances they appear to be the same. About a quarter of all survey respondents said they always rent a credit and/or background check, while a third of respondents said they never run a report.

You can see a full breakdown of these stats and more by downloading the full report at 2011 CHBO Report.