Renting A House Safely Today? How To Check Out Your New Landlord So You Dont End Up Out On The Curb! (Third In A Series)
In the first article in this series we covered how to find out if the owner of the home you are about to rent was in foreclosure and some tricks to use to see if foreclosure might be coming soon, but was not yet filed. And the differences between humans and legal entities owning the rental property.
Today we are going to look at how to get more insight on whoever it is that owns the home we are about to rent.
While checking the court records to see if the Lis Pendens has been filed, you will also want to see the other legal actions your landlord has been involved in. As mentioned in Article 2, if he is being sued by a lender for money not repaid, although not involving real property, action against his real property (real estate) may follow.
The court records will also show, divorces past and present, the actions he takes to collect money from previous tenants who did not pay and how active he is in legal actions. Good stuff to know.
Public records may give you an idea of how many properties he (or she) owns. Lots of properties owned with no or little legal action against her (or him) could well indicate a ship sailing smoothly on what are choppy waters for many others and the likelihood of staying in the house for a long time with little chance of being kicked out because the landlord failed to pay.
Easy and cheap way to further your investigation. Google the landlord. You may be amazed at the background information you will get here. Also go to the website of the local newspaper and scan the archives for articles that mention him.
Putting his name in quotations will limit the number of entries that are not about her. Putting geographic limiters like the name of your city and state will also limit bad hits. However, try the search with and without geographic filters to see what you find.
Eliminating geographic limitations may show previous interests and outside activity for the landlord. Eliminating geography limitations for me will show that I have written a book about renting houses and have written a number of articles on the subject. Reading them might make you decide you would like to be on my VIP Alert List for upcoming houses that we will have available, or that you wanted to look elsewhere. But at least you would be making the decision with added information
This will give you an idea of what else he is up to and somebackground. To keep up to date, as time passes, use Google alerts. Once at the Google home page put the word alert in the search box.
Select the application and enter your email address and the name of the landlord. Put quotes around her/his/its(company) name to reduce the wrong searches you will receive and add a word of local geography. George Beardsley Pasco, Pinellas, Tampa By, for example. This will send you a report every day on the name of your landlord as new events happen. Some of them will be about him and give you an advance indication of upcoming events.
If you find that there are several other persons in the same area with the same name you can use the minus symbol to eliminate repeated reports on the wrong person. In my area there is a famous golfer who is also named George Beardsley. So, if I were checking up on me I would enter George Beardsley golf.
That would reduce, but not eliminate, searches that were not me. You can custom the alert after doing a little experimentation when you first check the landlord out on Google.
Of course there are more heavy duty ways of doing this, also on the web. There are a number of investigation companies that will perform background investigations for a price, usually starting about $40 and then going way up. I wouldnt spend the money unless I had found some disturbing information from the free searches of had a feeling that all was not right.
Frankly, if the Google search, public records or the local newspaper had items that were disturbing, I would not check further, I would just look for a new landlord. One of the most disturbing things you may suspect is that that person does not own the house they are trying to rent. And we will tell you how to avoid that kind of landlord in the next installment.
Today we are going to look at how to get more insight on whoever it is that owns the home we are about to rent.
While checking the court records to see if the Lis Pendens has been filed, you will also want to see the other legal actions your landlord has been involved in. As mentioned in Article 2, if he is being sued by a lender for money not repaid, although not involving real property, action against his real property (real estate) may follow.
The court records will also show, divorces past and present, the actions he takes to collect money from previous tenants who did not pay and how active he is in legal actions. Good stuff to know.
Public records may give you an idea of how many properties he (or she) owns. Lots of properties owned with no or little legal action against her (or him) could well indicate a ship sailing smoothly on what are choppy waters for many others and the likelihood of staying in the house for a long time with little chance of being kicked out because the landlord failed to pay.
Easy and cheap way to further your investigation. Google the landlord. You may be amazed at the background information you will get here. Also go to the website of the local newspaper and scan the archives for articles that mention him.
Putting his name in quotations will limit the number of entries that are not about her. Putting geographic limiters like the name of your city and state will also limit bad hits. However, try the search with and without geographic filters to see what you find.
Eliminating geographic limitations may show previous interests and outside activity for the landlord. Eliminating geography limitations for me will show that I have written a book about renting houses and have written a number of articles on the subject. Reading them might make you decide you would like to be on my VIP Alert List for upcoming houses that we will have available, or that you wanted to look elsewhere. But at least you would be making the decision with added information
This will give you an idea of what else he is up to and somebackground. To keep up to date, as time passes, use Google alerts. Once at the Google home page put the word alert in the search box.
Select the application and enter your email address and the name of the landlord. Put quotes around her/his/its(company) name to reduce the wrong searches you will receive and add a word of local geography. George Beardsley Pasco, Pinellas, Tampa By, for example. This will send you a report every day on the name of your landlord as new events happen. Some of them will be about him and give you an advance indication of upcoming events.
If you find that there are several other persons in the same area with the same name you can use the minus symbol to eliminate repeated reports on the wrong person. In my area there is a famous golfer who is also named George Beardsley. So, if I were checking up on me I would enter George Beardsley golf.
That would reduce, but not eliminate, searches that were not me. You can custom the alert after doing a little experimentation when you first check the landlord out on Google.
Of course there are more heavy duty ways of doing this, also on the web. There are a number of investigation companies that will perform background investigations for a price, usually starting about $40 and then going way up. I wouldnt spend the money unless I had found some disturbing information from the free searches of had a feeling that all was not right.
Frankly, if the Google search, public records or the local newspaper had items that were disturbing, I would not check further, I would just look for a new landlord. One of the most disturbing things you may suspect is that that person does not own the house they are trying to rent. And we will tell you how to avoid that kind of landlord in the next installment.
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