A criminal background report is one of the many useful reports you can use for tenant screening when evaluating rental applicants. You will learn what kind of information you will actually find on a criminal background report from a tenant screening provider and how you can use that information when making a housing decision.

The Importance of Tenant Screening: The Criminal Background Report

In this video, Kaycee Miller from Rentec Direct dives into everything landlords and property managers need to know about criminal background reports and their role in tenant screening. Discover how to use criminal history data effectively and legally to make informed rental decisions while complying with federal fair housing laws and local regulations.

What You’ll Learn:

  • What is a criminal background report and how it fits into tenant screening
  • The importance of verifying tenant identities through name, date of birth, and address
  • How local, state, and federal laws impact your ability to use criminal records in screening
  • The differences between nationwide vs. county-level criminal searches
  • Why some criminal records may not appear on national databases
  • Tips for choosing a reliable tenant screening vendor

Criminal Background Reports: What Landlords Need to Know in 2025 – Watch the Video!

Criminal Background Reports: What Landlords Need to Know in 2025 – Video Transcript

If you’ve seen enough of my videos or read enough of my articles, you know that the number one advice I give is: always prioritize tenant screening.

And what does tenant screening mean when it comes to finding a qualified rental applicant? I mean, verifying their credit history, their criminal history, and running an eviction report. You need to gather as much data as you can to make a legal, qualified screening decision in order to find the most qualified rental applicant for your rental house.

Qualified means someone who’s likely to pay their rent on time, follow property rules and maintain the property, and keep your neighborhood and property safe.

My name is Kaycee Miller. I work for Rentec Direct property management software. I’m also a landlord, real estate investor, real estate developer, and I’ve written hundreds of articles over the past decade about how to be a great landlord, how to be a good tenant, and what it takes to be a great property manager.

What is a Criminal Background Report?

Today I want to really focus on tenant screening and, specifically, criminal background reports. Using the criminal background report is a way that you can make a legal screening criteria decision about a rental applicant.

But it’s always super important to understand your legal responsibility in maintaining and upholding federal fair housing laws and any state, local, countywide, federal regulations that are in place that help you make legal screening decisions.

How Criminal Background Reports Are Used in Tenant Screening

When it comes to criminal background, usually you can pull a criminal history report on a rental applicant to see if they have been convicted of any violent crimes that could make it so they might be a dangerous renter in your rental property.

Now, I say lots of words like “could be” or “might be”, and you’re making decisions that are quantifiable based on data. You decision is also based on risk mitigation and evaluating the likelihood that a tenant might not be a good renter based on past convicted behavior.

But again, all of this is determined by your state, local, federal laws, because some jurisdictions have laws where you can’t even use criminal history until your tenant has passed all the other screening criteria or you can’t even use criminal records at all.

Like in Seattle, there is a law in place where you can’t even use criminal records for tenant screening. Usually that has to do with preventing discrimination and giving renters a fair chance at housing.

But in other cases, when you can legally look at someone’s criminal record, what you’re trying to determine is looking back at past criminal convictions of crimes that might prove dangerous to your property or the surrounding neighborhood or other tenants in your property.

How Criminal Records Are Tracked

Now, using criminal records, there’s some important things to consider. Criminal records are recorded based on someone’s name, date of birth, and property address.

So if you think of someone’s name, there might be lots of people by the same name out there on a national criminal database.

But you’re then trying to narrow it down by:

  • Do they have the same name as your rental applicant?
  • Do they have the same birthday?
  • Does the address match anything on their rental history that they provided on your rental application?

The discrepancy on what’s reported on a nationwide criminal history has to do with how a local jurisdiction reports criminal crimes to a nationwide database.

Choosing the Right Tenant Screening Vendor

So when you’re determining which tenant screening vendor to use, you want to find one that has a really robust criminal database and is working with a tenant screening provider that can really show lots of nationwide criminal history, but then also allow you to narrow down to a state, city, or county level to really determine the criminal history of a rental applicant.

In some cases, different counties or cities don’t even have digital records of criminal history, which is why they’re not showing up in the national database.

If you pull a criminal record report on a tenant in a specific county based on property address, that actually might require someone physically going down to a courthouse and manually going through paper copies of criminal records to find one that could match a rental applicant.

Different Levels of Criminal History Searches

When you are pulling a tenant screening report, that’s why there might be different levels of the types of searches that you can do.

You need to really determine:

  • Is a nationwide criminal database going to be enough?
  • Or do you really want to go down to that county level and specific local level to find out whether or not you are going to approve this rental applicant?

That’s why criminal history is just one of those tenant screening data points that you might use for making a housing decision. A good tenant screening provider will offer you access to multiple tenant screening reports at once.

Other Reports to Consider in Tenant Screening

You can also look at:

These are all different reports that you can use to make a housing decision to determine if someone is going to be a qualified renter for your rental house.

Final Thoughts

There are a lot of different ways to approach tenant screening and which tenant screening reports to evaluate. I’ve gone over credit reports and criminal reports. We’ll touch base on eviction history and what that looks like in terms of making a housing decision.

My name is Kaycee Miller. I work for Rentec Direct property management software.

I’m always here to help you learn different tips and advice for how to be a great property manager, landlord, or investor.

If you have any ideas of things that you want to learn more about, let us know!