Renting to International Tenants: How You Can Get the Information You Need, Without Breaking the Bank

In college towns with large international populations, or areas of the country where larger corporations hire internationally, who will be held responsible if a Tenant skips, or damages your property, and they have left the country? Should those companies be held responsible if a tenant needs to break the lease early, or return home sooner than expected? Should all international applicants be required to have a co-signer, even if their company or school refuses?

A great leasing recommendation tool is the Rent Rite Directory's Free Incident Reporting Database, accessible to Property Managers, Owners, and Individual Landlords. This system was created by Owners of Real Estate, for Owners of Real Estate. Joe Killinger and George Pino originally launched the Rent Rite Directory as a blog to help bring pertinent information to member of the Real Estate Community, and help them in making leasing decisions on issues, they themselves had also faced. The blog was so well received that they saw a need to create an even more substantial database, which is what you see online today. The website has grown nationwide in a short time due to its ability to trace the "untraceable."

Linda Scott, of Landmark Properties, and a frequent user of the Incident Reporting database, notes the importance of this type of system. "I think it's a good thing to be able to pull up information on International students {though}, especially since most don't have social security numbers and can't be turned over to collections."

The same goes for all tenants, and in order to comply with the Fair Housing Act, all tenants must be screened equally. The fact is whether you're from the U.S. or not, certain criteria that all landlords find pertinent when making leasing decisions is not always readily available. The Incident Reporting Database is nationwide, and offers members of the Real Estate community a free service that is able to track skips, evictions (even if they have not completed filing), proxy renters (those with qualifying credit, that rent on behalf of those who do not want their name on a lease, i.e.: sex offenders, sex traffickers, drug dealers, and convicted felons), as well as other lease violations that most landlord's would want to know about.

The site was created after countless hours working with legal professionals to make sure that no one's rights would be violated. The database is meant to be used as a tool to facilitate the leasing process, and not as a black list of "who not to rent to" and if Fair Credit Reporting Act compliant. If owners or managers have seen a skip, or other lease violation in someone's past, then they may be inclined still lease to the tenant, but with terms that are more in line with their past rental history would indicate. The Rent Rite Directory's Incident Reporting Database also offers an appeals process, as well as an addendum for their residents to sign, stating that they will be entered into the system, if they violate their lease.

The Rent Rite Directory also offers affordable tenant screening (credit and background checks) and the proceeds are used to fund the Incident reporting portion of the site. The tenants screening packages are also able to be customized for each client as well as Ala Carte packages.

There are socially responsible companies out there with your company's best interests in mind.