<p>We require all applicants 18 and older to be on the lease. This also means each has to complete an applicant and each have credit run on them.</p>
<p>^^ same. All adults screened and on the lease. You don’t want to end up with a bad apple, with significant criminal history for example, sliding in.</p>
<p>We also require everyone who will live thereto be listed on the lease, and everyone over 18 must fill out an application and sign the lease.</p>
<p>No exceptions.</p>
<p>If the parents of the family don’t want the couple on the list, there must be a reason.</p>
<p>The problem some landlords complain about here (S8 or not) is Hispanic renters adding many extended relative into a house. One real estate agent mentioned 11 related family members at one of his renters. He said as long as they are all related, it is legal. But a large crowd causes a lot of wear and tear, extra cars, etc.</p>
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<p>Some areas have enacted maximum occupancy limits to discourage this sort of practice. </p>
<p>This sometimes extends to hotel rooms as my friends and I found when we went down to Baltimore where the maximum occupancy per two bed hotel room is 4 persons. However, we found it wasn’t strictly enforced there…but YMMV depending on area…</p>
<p>minor hijack,</p>
<p>What rental screening service do you guys use? I’ve been using LexisNexis but wonder if there’s something better.</p>
<p>^^S2 is a county police officer. With the tenant base here, it’s a great rental screening service 
I do the phone interview thing and get their names, text him and then know whether to waste my time showing the house. It’s a very small county and excellent screening tool. Unfortunately it has weeded out almost every one of my calls on my most recent house for rent.</p>
<p>I use “peoplesmart” like search engine to run criminal check, in addition to credit report. I am wondering if that is illegal. Can some one suggest a credit report agency that I can use? My Real Estate Broker agency charges too much for it.</p>
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<p>A lease should always list the name of every person living at the residence even if they are children. The lease should say no one else can live there unless on the lease. And if this provision is breached, the tenant must pay some large amount of money per month for each month a person not on the lease lived there. </p>
<p>The lease should provide for monthly inspections, if you fear there will be a lot of extra people living in the residence.</p>
<p>artloversplus</p>
<p>As I said, we use LexisNexis smartmove. It’s $25/search for credit and background check. You set up an account then request a search. It can be set up so that either the landlord or the applicant pays for the search. They email the person who has to put info in (SSN etc) and set up an account. Then you get instant credit report with score and info back. I think it’s run through Trans Union. Overall I’ve been happy with it although sometime it’s TMI. Just this week, I ran one of the applicants and it came back with ‘sex offender’ listing. Fortunately, there was a photo and it was a completely different person with same first/last name and in a different state. Different middle name (and SSN I’m sure) so I was a bothered that they did not distinguish. I did let the applicant know that this had happened so they’d know in future that it could be a problem. He was shocked and bummed.</p>
<p>So, that’s why I was thinking of using a different service if anyone had any recs.</p>
<p>When my D was looking for an apartment the rental company had her supply her own credit report along with her application.
ihs76- I think we now use a program sold by the same company that provides the property management software. They give you a bunch of different options and you can custom the report to suit your needs and market. The score they give is not a traditional credit score but a rentability score.</p>
<p>as I said before, I am not familiar with section 8 renting.</p>
<p>If you have experiences with section 8 renting, what additional terms do you put into the lease? I am just not feel good renting to a section 8 tenant. But one of my investment property is in an area most likely will be renting to a section 8 tenant.</p>
<p>Thanks to your insight, the 4 bed room house described above is rented to a non-section 8 tenant.</p>
<p>Several questions:</p>
<p>In a section 8 inspection, do the inspector expect</p>
<p>Washer Dryer installed?
Refrigerator ?
Stove with vent hood?
Microwave?</p>
<p>What else they are looking for?</p>
<p>Bathroom has a window or working exhaust fan, no cracked windows, smoke alarms, working heat and plumbing. I have discussed this several times over the years with our county person (when I was considering renting to them) and I don’t recall any of the things you mentioned.</p>
<p>You never know.</p>
<p>I had an apartment fail inspection once because the bathroom sink had a drum trap.</p>
<p>We now keep our rents higher than the section 8 max for our area.</p>
<p>^^ I thought drum trap is outlawed in some states. I don’t know why, nevertheless.</p>
<p>For new construction they no longer meet code, but they are still allowed if they were legal when installed, and I think you can still repair/replace them. At least in my state.</p>
<p>My buildings are all 100 years old, some of the plumbing is pretty ancient.</p>
<p>My point was, there can be a certain level of capriciousness in the inspection. You never know what they might object to, even if perfectly safe or legal.</p>
<p>what you have to do, NRE? If they did not pass the drum trap? replace it might be costly? Anyway, do I have to provide stove and vent? When I remodel, I did not put a vent, stove is easy.</p>
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We didn’t do anything, because we really didn’t want to rent to a section 8 anyway.</p>
<p>You are not required to make it pass the section 8 inspection, only if you want to rent to a section 8 tenant.</p>
<p>Providing a stove is a health code issue in my state; you can put it in your lease that you don’t have to provide one, but it is pretty rare that a rental doesn’t come with a stove.</p>
<p>A stove vent is not a code issue AFAIK, but will the inspector require it? Who knows.</p>
<p>Section 8 can be a good thing when the pool of applicants for a rental property you own are all pretty much the same risks that you cannot easily discern who is the better candidate. The fact of the matter is that the Section 8, once you have your place compliant, pretty much guarantees the rent flow. My MIL avoided S8 like the plague, but when a cousin started renting out property in low income areas, she found that finding people with good or even acceptable credit histories was impossible. The area her house was located was not likely to attract renters with the type of profile that is ideal for renting, so it’s often a matter of picking the best of a lot that have issues, and going for the probabilities of the least amount of potential problems. If you can see where they are currently living and it is not a wreck, can get some kind of comment from prior landlords, that can be useful info Seciton 8 then becomes the icing on the cake because you have some assurance that the rent will be paid. Having to evict a family that cannot pay the rent is a traumatic, tragic prospect, no matter how you look at it.</p>