Tenant referencing and criminal records.

docmaggiemay

Would you expect tenant referencing (done via a letting agent) to pick up a tenants serious criminal record?

I'm not talking about the odd speeding ticket. I mean repeated serious offences with long jail terms for firearms offences, most recently 3 years ago. I found out about it by doing a Google search on the name which took all of 30 secs to come up with the info.

Should this be identified with proper referencing?

G_M

Agents have no access to the criminal records database.

Googling the tenant may turn up newspaper reports of court hearings etc but I doubt your average agent does this. As you say, nothing to stop a LL doing it though.

docmaggiemay

Of course they can't do CRB checks on everyone.

But should they check previous landlord/personal references which might reveal something?

PasturesNew

I'd be more worried about a landlord with a serious criminal background than a tenant. Tenants come and go .... landlord's more permanent. You never know who you're renting from really do you.

G_M

docmaggiemay wrote: »

Of course they can't do CRB checks on everyone.

But should they check previous landlord/personal references which might reveal something?

Agents have no access to the criminal records database.

Googling the previous landlord/personal references may turn up newspaper reports of court hearings etc but I doubt your average agent does this. As you say, nothing to stop a LL doing it though.

docmaggiemay

G_M wrote: »

Agents have no access to the criminal records database.

Googling the previous landlord/personal references may turn up newspaper reports of court hearings etc but I doubt your average agent does this. As you say, nothing to stop a LL doing it though.

Yes, thanks. I did hear you the first time.

Obviously letting agents have no access to the criminal records database. But that's not what I asked. Should they take personal and previous landlord references and ask appropriate questions that might reveal such a history? Or is it really the luck of the draw?

You obviously don't ever really know what you are getting. But really serious offences must be relevant to an application, aren't they?

missile

A good agent will check references but I would not expect this to reveal criminal offences. AFIK few if any would google a prospective tenant. A careful LL would ask to see what checks the agent had done on his behalf.

dgtazzman

Wouldn't trust an agent as far as I could throw him tbh, on our last application, we were approved (so one would assume they'd done all the refencing and were satisfied), so set everything up for the new property and then on the day before moving in they started ringing if I could ask my employer to respond to the income reference they'd sent them that morning. niiiiiccceee.

So basicly, I wouldn't expect anything, really :rotfl:

Svenena

The tenant might have moved within the past three years, in which case how would the previous landlord have known anything about it? Even if they'd been living in the same place, I wouldn't assume the ex-LL had knowledge of everything going on in the T's life. All they will be able to tell the LA is whether or not they were a good tenant.

RAS

docmaggiemay wrote: »

Would you expect tenant referencing (done via a letting agent) to pick up a tenants serious criminal record?

Should this be identified with proper referencing?

No.

It does not show up on a Credit check, unless the tenant has earned a CIFAS fraud marker. it is unlikely that the tenant will have applied for credit whilst in HMP, so the address would not be listed.

LA will ask for a reference from the employer, to check current employment and will know when that started. A reference from a previous LL could cover the last 6 months or year.

Anything prior to that is probably unexplored history.

Yorkie1

I may be missing something here, but is there any reason why the application / tenant referencing form used by the LA doesn't contain these questions?