What do landlords learn in a background check? More than most renters realize | Hacker News Reader

What do landlords learn in a background check? More than most renters realize

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9 pointsclumsysmurf16 comments

As a landlord (am I still allowed to say that word?) in a very pro-tenant state myself, this is one of the costs associated with the extremely strong tenant protections and nearly compete ban on evictions -- if I let a bad tenant in my house, I could lose $50-100k by the time I get them out (which could take a year or more) and the house fixed up and the lawyers paid.

As a result, I can only afford to consider tenants that are absolutely perfect -- never had any problems, have stellar credit, can easily afford a big deposit and the rent.

I wouldn't need to do as absurdly thorough and limiting of screening if it were easier to deal with problems when they occur, but with eviction moratoria, huge legal costs, and all of the other misery associated with bad tenants, we have to be super picky and really invasive in our screenings to protect ourselves.

I understand why people want to have strong tenant protections, but they're not free, and much of that cost is born by would-be tenants who are probably going to be fine but aren't absolutely perfect.

Why is this a problem whose response is risk-shifting onto tentants through both limited access and privacy-violating surveillance apparatus, rather than risk-pooling and restitution to landlords when such harms do occur?

What is the false-positive rate in denying housing to reasonable tenant risks?

What is the false-negative rate in failing to identify high-risk tenants?

What are the externalities of living in a low-trust, high-surveillance society?

> rather than risk-pooling and restitution to landlords when such harms do occur?

How would this work? Would it be some kind of tenant paid for insurance for compensating landlords?

I'll flip this back around:

What mechanisms would be part of a sensible programme? What benefits would be required, and to what parties? Delivered in what manner?

The most straightforward and equitable solution to the problem is a fairly simple one: allow landlords to evict tenants who do not pay their rent.

If you want to develop some housing-for-all plan, you can try to develop one, but it isn't particularly reasonable to just demand that property owners provide free housing out of the "goodness of their hearts"

You seem to be arguing against an imagined position rather than the one I've taken.

Well, you did ask why this a problem “whose response is a risk-shifting onto tenants”, and the response is super-simple: “because it’s not their property”.

If there were a whole bunch of laws that said that if you rented a, say, car you were making payments on to another person, that protected them from having to give it back even if they weren’t making payments until a court said so? …and while a court would rule that they owed you, the result would be a car you had to pay for that you couldn’t possess or use for months because court dates and enforcement were months out? …and further, even once the court said so, you’d still get a damaged/broken car along with a debt against someone you’d never be able to collect most of the time?

You’d be real, real damn careful who you rented that car to.

Same thing.

And it's not your residence, in the sense of abode.

The question of "propery" versus "residence" is one of values. There is no right or wrong answer between them, and the question of which is to be given higher consideration is a social construct. The answers chosen may well vary with time and circumstances.

I've asked a few questions upstream in this thread. You might find value in giving a serious attempt at considering and answering them, perhaps from several viewpoints and value-bases.

Someone could write a very interesting whitepaper on this.

But I'll just sidestep it by noting that this problem formed under the current social/economic/political system and so many/most solutions proposed in that hypothetical whitepaper won't have a chance of being implemented.

There's some truth to this.

That said, determining 1) what the fundamental problem is and 2) what the desired end state might be is still useful even where 3) the path of Getting There From Here is unclear.

And once points 1 & 2 have been addressed, there might be some additional clarity as to 3.

> Problems in the reports include ... outdated evictions or criminal charges, an eviction showing up as multiple evictions ...

What is an "outdated eviction"?

Does "outdated" also apply to "criminal charges". How is a criminal charge "outdated".

Who would want to rent to anyone who has ever been evicted? Especially in a tenant friendly state where it is very difficult to evict?

Outdated evictions refer to evictions from the past that it is felt should be removed from certain reporting. This is difficult because, unlike with credit histories and bankruptcies, I am not aware of any sort of standard that requires the removal eviction records, and if an eviction is filed with a local or state judicial body you may not be able to remove that from any sort of record outside of having it expunged.

Evictions don't even really turn up in any sort of reporting, credit or otherwise, unless records are filed in court and/or liens and judgements are placed/awarded and then those records can be any number of things depending on the circumstances and the state you live in.

Many of these reporting "agencies" or "groups" rely on public information or information that is provided by landlords. A landlord can opt to provide the rental payment history of a tenant to a reporting agency like a bank reports payment history of a loan to the credit bureaus but it is far from consistent.

As a landlord, I would never, ever rent to a tenant that had a previous eviction. The risk is just too high. A bad tenant can take 6+ months to evict plus tens of thousands of dollars in repairs. Once the eviction process starts, the tenant has zero incentive to pay their rent or treat the property with respect. And it's even worse: I had a tenant that had a "roommate" not on the lease that was basically squatting. All the squatter had to do was claim that he paid the leaseholder rent to sublet and all of the eviction tools available to me went poof. I'm lucky as my building has 4 units; I can't imagine what someone with a single unit dwelling would do when they encounter a bad tenant.

I completely get it, and it is not a problem that is limited to the US, either. My parents are landlords in Canada and getting rid of a clearly negligent, possibly criminal, tenant is very difficult, time consuming, and expensive. I can absolutely understand where the landlords are coming from and the fear that they feel.

I am actually in Ontario, which is a very pro-tenant jurisdiction.

Even expungement won’t save you, once it’s in a 3rd party database-absent laws that make screwing up here really expensive for the company providing the wrong information.

It’s one thing to screen people, but you have to have your data in order. Doing that well is not a free thing, but we probably need it. “Let me into your bank account”, on the other hand, is just going to result in lol-kthx-bye.

If we had a reasonable attestation framework, we could do something like let the bank attest that, say, “applicant has direct deposited income equal or greater to 3x rent per month” or the like, maybe?

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