Here’s one: applicant was moving from Arizona. She listed prior apartment management company’s manager, but the company was now defunct. Googled and found out, yep, management company in fact was defunct. But the manager had an unusual (Polish, I think) name, so I Googled her and found her phone number. Rang her up, explained who I was and why I was calling. Again, the Nolo press book explains what questions you can and cannot ask. You can ask whether they remember the tenant, the length of the tenancy and how much the rent was, whether the rent was paid on time, whether they gave proper notice, whether they left the place in reasonable condition, whether they’d rent to that tenant again, etc.
So here we go. “Do you remember X?” I ask. “Oh yes, I remember her!”
“Can you tell me what the rent was?” “Intermittent,” she said. (I actually meant the *amount* of the rent. This was a much better answer, though!) “Excuse me?” I said. “The rent, it was kind of intermittent.”
“I see. Well, let me ask you this then. Would you rent to this tenant again?” She said: “I’m sorry, I’m not going to answer that, I think I’ve said too much already.”
I said, no, thank you very much, you’ve told me exactly what I needed to know and I really appreciate your doing that for me.
I’ve also had tenants list their mom as a landlord reference. Give me a break, whose mom is going to say anything bad about them.
So far (knock on wood), I’ve been very lucky with tenants, but part of that I think is a result of screening very carefully.
