Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Wondering how much weight you guys, both as tenants looking for a roommate and as landlords looking for a tenant would give this information.
As a landlord, I have a tenant who is looking for a roommate. They found someone, and asked us to look over their credit report and run a simple background check for them, since we are used to doing that. Credit was good, guy was normal, personal background check was clean, but as part of our background check, we also do a quick google of the name, just to make sure there isn't anything super bad that comes up that the background check misses, or to see if the person has an open facebook or myspace page where they detail how badly they trashed their last apartment, or something.
On doing the google search, we found what is almost certainly a close relative (father or uncle) who is in prison for some very bad things.
We told the existing tenant the facts of what we had found, without playing it up or down, and left it in her hands to decide which way to go with it.
So I'm curious, how would you handle that information? It isn't information about the tenant, but it is information about someone who could be coming to visit at some point. As a landlord, would you be ok with it? As a single female tenant looking for a roommate, what would you do?
I bet if we do a history with your real name, we can come up with less than desirable people somewhere in your ancestry.
How would you like to be denied for a rental, or a loan, if say... "Our records indicate that you are 9.6% related to Atilla the Hun, and that disqualifies you; I'm sorry".
Don't punish a kid for the sins of the father. Everybody should be an individual, judged by their actions alone.
Who knows how much influence this relative has had in your prospective renters' life? I have several uncles, aunts and first cousins I have only met a couple times in my life. To my knowledge, they are all law-abiding citizens, but if they weren't, they certainly have had no influence in my life one way or the other.
For all the reasons already given, I totally disagree with your having told the tenant what you discovered about the prospective roommate's "bad" family connection. The information you discovered certainly wasn't something that was divulged in the regular background check and, as said, has no bearing on the prospective roommate's suitability. I would even go so far as to suspect that if someone discovered that he/she was turned down as a tenant solely on the basis of being related to someone with a criminal background, this would be cause for a lawsuit based on discrimination.
As a landlord, I agree with everything everyone has said. We would never turn someone down based on something a family member who wouldn't be living at the property had done. And we told her so when giving her the facts as we found them.
But we are letting this tenant do a sublease. She has to live with this roommate. So she has the final say. She asked us to look things over for her and let her know what we found, and we did so. I felt that the fact that someone by the same first and last name (an uncommon name) from a town of less than 10k people was in prison for very bad crimes was a fact that a single woman looking for a roommate should be aware of.
She could have found it herself with a little google effort, it was the #5 match upon searching for just the person's name. It actually took a little more effort to determine that it WASN'T the applicant. Age was the giveaway, there was a 30 year age difference, but that took some research to find out.
As I said, she had asked us to do the same research I would normally do on any applicant and tell her our findings. That is what I did. What she does with it may not be the same as what we would do with it, but it is her decision.
What if we didn't tell her what we found, and it did end up being a problem later on, would we then be liable for anything that might happen to her because we had information we didn't tell her?
My point remains, Lacerta, that you went beyond the simple background check which your tenant asked you to do. No, of course you wouldn't be liable if something happened down the line based on a simple background check. You went a step further and, in my opinion, overstepped the boundaries by telling her what you discovered about a relative.
With all due respect I'm in complete disagreement with you on this one.
If it's readily available on Google, then you have no moral or legal liabilty now IMO. You might have had you not told her.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
