ATTENTION LOS ANGELES & VENTURA COUNTY RENTERS/TENANTS: Check Out Your Landlord - it was BOUND to Happen
Well, this has been long overdue - a site to check out prospective landlords. I am so glad that this service is now available to consumers. As an MLO here in Los Angeles & Ventura counties, I have heard way too many horror stories from many of my own borrowers of how they were treated when the properties they were renting got foreclosed on.
Nevermind that these folks were great tenants in good standing who paid their rent every month, on time. When the landlord stopped paying the mortgage, these folks were SOL when it came time to honor lease agreements or security deposit returns.
These days, prospective tenants need to be checking out their prospective landlords just as carefully as the landlord will be checking them out. In the past, I have always been happy to do records searches for friends and family but now, prospective renters have a service that they can use on their own.
For those renters here in Los Angeles & Ventura counties who are going it alone in finding a rental, I highly recommend that they utilize this service before signing any lease/rental agreement. Otherwise, use a licensed Realtor for searching for prospective rentals and DON'T blindly enter into any agreement with any landlord until they have been checked out.
I saw the announcement for this new website/service and I thought it was a good idea BUT why aren't the BIG 3 SUPER Credit Bureaus doing this.
Maybe they will get on the bandwagon since they have the resources to do this type of verification at their fingertips. From their website....
Like most good ideas, CheckYourLandlord.com came about through a personal experience.
When one of the founders of CheckYourLandlord.com was looking to rent a house, he enlisted the help of a real estate broker who specializes in high-end properties. The prospective renter and the broker both became skeptical about the ownership of a particular property after noticing warning signs, such as contradictory statements by the owner. This caused them to wonder if the property might be subject to foreclosure.
At this point, they both realized that there was no easy way to verify the ownership and lien status of the property, as well as the background of the owner.
After discussing this experience with others, they soon learned of the growing problem of landlord fraud committed against renters. While landlords routinely check on renters before accepting a lease, and there are hundreds of services to assist them with this, no service existed that would help a renter verify the claims of a potential landlord. You can read about some of the various types of landlord fraud and rental scams and browse our news and video archive of related stories to see for yourself how this growing problem is affecting renters.
From this experience, CheckYourLandlord.com was born.
Our mission at CheckYourLandlord.com is to provide renters with peace of mind. We give renters the ability to take action to reduce the risk that they might become a victim of a scam or foreclosure that could cost them thousands of dollars and untold hours of distress.
The CheckYourLandlord.com executive team is comprised of experienced professionals with extensive backgrounds in the Real Estate, Finance and Legal fields. Do you want to learn more about us? Have a question?
Renters...Check Your Landlord!
http://www.checkyourlandlord.com/order-your-report
Wallace S. Gibson, CPM * GIBSON MANAGEMENT GROUP, Ltd.
Central Virginia
LandlordWhisperer
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