If you are a landlord, it’s actually quite easy.  The FCRA allows “tenant screening” as a permissible purpose for running certain background checks, including full criminal background screens, bankruptsy, eviction, and judgement checks.  You just need a reliable provider.  This can be obtained easy enough by googling ‘tenant screening’.  Which ones are reliable though?

What I’ve found is most tenant screening companies are using extremely limited databases.  None of them actually disclose what data they are using, or how they got it, or how complete it is.  With that, it’s more or less just a guess as to if they have valid data.  Most tenant screening companies suggest you use one of their packages which include a “nationwide” search of some sorts.  I’ve found these less than accurate as well because their nationwide results tend to only have results if they specifically have already scanned for that particular record.  What are the chances?  Pretty slim indeed.  It often equates to a substantial investment in invalid results.  I’ve even heard that some landlords use multiple screening companies paying two to three times what they should as a result.

Because of the guesswork, and game of chance out there, and since we have lots of landlords using Rentec Direct for it’s property management software capabilities, we’ve worked out a partnership with a premier data screening wholesaler to be able to provide tenant screening services directly to our customers.  The quality of the data is second to none.

One might ask, “how is it different than the rest”?  Great question!  While we offer similar nationwide and statewide searches, most of our nationwide and statewide databases are updated extremely frequently with complete records from that state.  This differs from many screening companies.  Additionally, and this is a major difference, we offer an intelligent search (Intellisearch) feature which at no cost to you scans the entire previous address history of your prospective tenant.  It then recommends the specific local products designed to give you the most accurate results for this tenant.  After all, why spend 4 times as much out there on a broad nationwide search when you can learn the specific locations this tenant has lived and run state and county level searches which produce up to date, and flawless results for as little as $6.  By the way, our comprehensive nationwide criminal, which includes the nationwide sex offender database, is only $9.95 for Rentec members.

We’re currently offering a 2 month FREE trial to Rentec Pro which includes a 30% discount on all screening products.

The REI Brain has recently completed a review of Rentec Direct as well.  The video review is attached here, and the complete review can be seen here.

Special thanks to Trevor and thereibrain team from the Rentec Team.

1. Online property advertisement was made available in 2008 and is expected to undergo some additional improvements in 2009.   While it does it’s job completely at the moment, we’ll be adding additional customization to the listing pages so it can look and feel more like your own site.
2. Take applications online.  Since the properties are listed online, why not take applications online as well?  We’ll be providing landlords a customizable application where they can have potential tenants fill out the data right online and have it submitted and stored electronically for your review.  Application fee’s (if any) will be processed right online instantly.
3. A tenant portal is well under way and will likely be released within the next few weeks.  This is a location where your tenants can login with their own password and see their balance and historical payments and charges.  Also here they will be able to update their email address should it change and modify their email preferences.
4. We’re working some partnerships with other industry professionals who bring national tenant and credit screening.  We plan to integrate these directly into Rentec Direct, so when you add a new tenant, or receive an application from them, you can access their screening information with a single click.
5. Automated payment processing.  Ever wanted to setup a renter for automated withdrawal from their checking account to yours?   This technology is called ACH and we’ll be including that with Rentec Direct.

Much more too!  We have dedicated programmers who are constantly working to make Rentec Direct better.  If you have a request to make Rentec Direct a better product or work better for you, we want to hear it.  Please email it to suggesstion@rentecdirect.com.

We designed Rentec for individual property owners and investors who own and manage their own properties. Rentec direct is designed for you, the investor who may do property investing full time or part time and you own from one to one hundred properties.  The owners and designers of Rentec Direct are landlords too and we know what it is like to manage a handful of properties without the need or expense of paying a property management company.  We found the need to create Rentec Direct because there was no software application available that fit our needs fully as landlords.  As a current or potential landlord yourself, you may have experienced the same.

Rentec is built from the ground up to meet the needs of landlords managing typically between 1 to 100 properties.  Very rarely do we see a landlord or small team managing a larger set of properties, so we are able to fine tune the software to work best for this niche.

Another driving factor for us in offering Rentec for free is that generally we feel life has treated us pretty darn good.  I personally have the best family one could ask for, great friends, and live in beautiful Southern Oregon.  All this came from a lot of hard work, the help and support of our community and country, and perhaps a little luck.  One of our goals with Rentec is to give something back.  There’s thousands or more man-hours put into developing Rentec Direct, and we give away most of that for free.  It’s our way of contributing back to the landlord and investor community and saying Thank You in general.

Rentec Direct is FREE for individual landlords.  There’s no risk to try it out, so take it for a spin today.