All too often private landlords feel that they can judge a person by talking to them and getting a tenant letter reference from an employer and previous landlord. But then again all too often private landlords get stung with bad debt and worse still the apartment or house trashed.

Why does this happen? Usually because the tenant is not who they say they are. And the answer to the problem is so, so, simple, get a tenant check to help ensure their identity is validated. Not only that many online checking services will interrogate the credit history of the tenant, identify and previous bad debts and court judgements for non payment.

Better still it is now really cheap to get an online tenant credit check, from as less than £10.00 in the UK (or $20 in US) a landlord can find out if a tenant has had credit problems in the past. One such UK company is credit-check-services.co.uk, their services are tiered so that a landlord can choose an option based on the overall perceived tenant risk. But you don’t have to use this company, just search the web and you will find many similar companies providing identity and credit checks.

So, if you are a landlord and about to let your property what are you going to do? Make a judgement call and keep your fingers crossed, hope you don’t end up with thousands in debt, or are you going to check the tenant identity and credit history. Hopefully after reading this article you will do the sensible thing – if not, good luck!