No, I’m not talking about a new abdominal workout but rather advocating that landlords be on top of things when choosing who to rent to. I bring up the topic to highlight that the majority of landlords don’t do this kind of research using instead a “gut check” to determine if someone is lease-worthy; they can end up hurting themselves or others if they aren’t doing the due diligence to know who they are renting to. It’s also on my mind as we had dinner last night with a client (a couple) who was regaling us with stories of him having to out upwards of 3 felons from a property over the past 2 years. Each of these tenants had been renting in the building prior to them buying it so they hadn’t had the opportunity to do a background check of their own and when you buy a property with outstanding leases you can’t require the tenants to undergo a background check – you just get what is handed to you.
In fact, Washington has just recently passed an offender re-entry housing law under HB 6157 that will impact landlord’s liability for renting property to past offenders.
Sections of this bill show the potential of liability being removed from the landlord BUT ONLY IF the landlord follows certain procedures. The full details are in the RHA newsletter publication dated in August 2007, Vol XXI, No. 8, Section A but I’ll paraphrase here by saying that basically you have to disclose to residents in your building that you have a policy of renting to offenders and that you must take steps to report or halt any criminal activity you have knowledge of on your property premises. You can contact Alice Bartley of RHA ([email protected]) to see if she has extra copies of this newsletter available.
One way you can opt out of some of this potential for liability is to have a “no felony” policy as part of your rental screening process. There are several ways that you can screen prospective tenants and one of them is to do a background check for criminal history. In the Puget Sound area you can sign up as a member of Rental Housing Association of Puget Sound (www.RHA-PS.com) and get access to their tenant screening services which can include background as well as credit checks. You can also check for sex offenders online at this website. Even if you don’t sign up for RHA, it’s worth your time and money to do some research, but I HIGHLY recommend people get involved in organizations like RHA because they keep you informed and they also lobby regularly on behalf of landlord rights.
In Wichita, KS you can go online to this website for the KASPER search they have available. (KASPER stands for Kansas Adult Supervised Population Electronic Repository.) Apparently it is the “friendly ghost” for landlords and perhaps anyone meeting and dating online. 🙂 I found the boyfriend of one of my KS tenants on this website – she’s been letting him stay at my property (this started prior to my purchase of the building) but they are moving out as of the end of this month. Good. And Goodbye.
If you are a person looking to buy rental property I would recommend that you ask the seller if they have ALL the records for the tenant screening processes that they’ve used in the past to provide during your inspection process and not just the lease records. You will want to know if there are known felons living on the premises especially if you’ll be responsible for possible liabilities due to a tenant’s bad behavior and a new owner must meet the terms of a lease agreement if it is still in place when buying a property.
Another area where I wonder how it will play out over time is that in residential units (1-4 in WA) the State’s required Seller Disclosure Form has a notice stating that sellers need not disclose if there are sex offenders living near their home. If the home is used as rental property, and a known sex offender is renting at the property, will the seller need to disclose it?
