As a landlord or property manager, when you rent a unit to a tenant, you are getting into a financial relationship with everyone on the lease. Because of this, it is extremely important to have an idea of what kind of person this is. Looks can be deceiving, and it’s best to look at their history in order to make an informed decision. That’s why we’re proud to offer our Tenant Verification Reports, which can be purchased through the Streamline platform.
The Tenant Verification Report provides three main functions:
- Enhanced ID verification to ensure that this person is who they say they are.
- A Softcheck, which is a form of a background check. This will look for any criminal history, convictions, sex offender lists, etc. If a person has previously been evicted by another landlord, this will show up on this report.
- A Credit Check to help you get a better picture of their financial position.
Tenant Verification Reports are a paid product, so you’ll need to ensure that you have a valid payment method added to the platform. Simply go to Settings / Billing / Payment Methods to set this up. More on that here.
TVRs are powered by our partner, Certn. This is a paid product, and you can review our current pricing here.
Two Methods of Generating Reports
There are two ways for you to have this report filled out. Either you (the Landlord or Property Manager) can submit the tenant/prospect’s information on their behalf, or the system can send them a link and have them fill it out. The choice is up to you. Some people like to take matters into their own hands and do it themselves, and other people would rather that someone else does this.
TVR Quick Check
Running a TVR Quick Check is the most common way to do things on our platform. In order to run this on a tenant/prospect, you’ll need to have permission from them to do this. Make sure to have this documented in your application for tenancy, or some other document. But it is up to you to ensure that you have this from your tenant/prospect.
A TVR can be ordered from either the Prospects or the Tenants page. Just click the RunReport button.
Next, choose the Fill in Form option.
If you haven’t run a TVR Quick Check before, we’ll need to enable this feature for you. The main reason for that is that we want to touch base to ensure that you know that you need to have the person’s documented permission, prior to running this on them. Once the feature is enabled, you’ll see the following dialog:
Enter in all of the required information. Here are a few things to keep in mind:
- You’ll need to have a property already created, so we know which property this is an application for.
- Previous address history must go back 5 years. This is to ensure that we are pulling the information for the right person.
- The Enhanced ID fields are not required. However, if you choose to validate their ID, please upload the front image, back image (for driver’s licenses only), and a selfie of the tenant/prospect. Make sure to enter their name exactly as it appears on their ID, including a middle name.
Once this is all done, click Purchase Report on the bottom of the screen.
After this, the information will be sent to Certn to run this report. The TVR Quick Check should return within 5 to 10 minutes. It is possible that it may take longer if the report was flagged for manual review. This can sometimes happen if the name on their ID doesn’t match the name submitted exactly.
You will receive an email when the report is ready and can download it from either the email or on the tenant/prospect pages.
TVR Standard
Once you have created a prospect/tenant on the platform, you can order a Tenant Verification Report for them. Click the Run Report button and confirm their information.
An email will be sent to your prospect. If they happen to delete the email or not receive it, the email can be resent by clicking the Resend Request button on the prospects page.
Your prospect will then be invited to fill in their information, including current landlord, employer, and other references. This information is all used to compile an accurate report.
Once the prospect has completed the survey, our partners at Certn will begin processing the report. When the report is ready, you will receive an email notification. Reports can take up to 24 hours to process after the prospect has submitted all of their information.
The report can then be downloaded directly from the prospects page.
Note: If you send a TVR request to a tenant/prospect and they do not fill it out, you will not be billed. You are only billed for completed reports. Pricing information can be viewed here.