Landlords who are diligent about screening potential tenants may lean heavily on reference letters from previous landlords a tenant has rented from. The problem is that some less-than-desirable tenants may decide not to take a chance on what a previous landlord might say about them.
A tenant with a history of late rent payments or being loud and disruptive enough to trigger complaints from neighboring tenants may fake a reference letter. You may need to do a little detective work to make sure that what appears to be a valid landlord reference letter wasn’t the product of the tenant’s imagination and creative writing skills! Read below to find out how to spot a fake landlord reference letter. Or see our owner services to find out how we can do this for you.
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Steps for How to Spot a Fake Landlord Reference Letter
Step 1: Confirm the Landlord Really is a Landlord
Who is to say that the individual who supposedly wrote and signed a prospective tenant’s reference letter is even a landlord? A savvy tenant might have foresight enough to give you the name and phone number of a real person willing to vouch for him or her. But if the letter is a fake, that “landlord” is more likely a friend or relative of the prospective tenant.
Try calling the number without revealing who you are, then ask a question as though you are someone looking for an apartment. From here you may be able to gauge if they are truly a landlord or not, assuming they were not prepared for this question.
Step 2: Inquire about the Tenant
Ask questions about the tenant that require more than a simple yes or no response. Ask questions like, “Why were you comfortable writing a reference letter for so-an-so?” Or “What would the tenants in the adjacent units have to say about so-and-so?”
Be wary if the “landlord” gives answers that are either vague or too detailed to be the result of a typical landlord/tenant relationship.
Step 3: Verify Tenant Information
Ask the “landlord” who wrote the reference letter to confirm information the prospective tenant provided on your application form. A legitimate landlord should be able to verify the tenant’s date of birth, move-in and move-out dates, previous address, and other information that landlords typically keep on file.
If You’re Still Not Sure …
If you’re still not certain the reference letter was written by the person who signed it as the prospective tenant’s former landlord, dig a little deeper. Check into publicly available records such as property tax rolls and property transfer records to see if they match up with what you already know about the purported landlord. If everything matches up, it’s probably safe to assume that the reference letter is genuine.
Selecting Tenants the Right Way
There are some very good reasons for deciding not to rent to a given individual—reasons to believe he or she would not be a good tenant. But rejecting a prospective tenant always carries the possibility that the rejection could be viewed as a violation of the Fair Housing Act, which makes it illegal to refuse to rent to an applicant based on the individual’s race, color, national origin, religion, sex, family status, or disability.
It’s best to decide what minimum criteria will apply to all prospective tenants and be consistent about measuring all applicants against the same yardstick. Make providing false information and falsifying references a disqualifier for every applicant.
Few landlords question the importance of screening potential tenants, but some are more diligent about tenant screening than others. Those who have a property manager do their tenant screening for them benefit from the experience that property managers have in conducting background checks and interpreting the results. They know how to access and interpret the information needed to predict with relative certainty whether a particular applicant would be a good tenant.
Rather than put too much stock in a reference letter that could be a work of fiction, shift the emphasis to making tenant selection decisions based on accurate, up-to-date, verifiable information from reliable sources. You, too, may find that it makes good sense to outsource tenant screening to an expert like us.
Get in touch today to find out how we can help.
