Tenant Vetting Service

 

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A landlord should always check a tenants suitability before granting a tenancy. The tenant vetting service is designed to be an addition to normal reference taking practices (e.g. landlords and character references).

We had a member not long ago who requested a check to be carried out. At first, we were unable to locate the tenant because he had given a false postcode. However when we finally got the correct postcode and found the tenant he had over £29,000 in county court judgements against him!

IMPORTANT
The new Third Party Data Business Requirement Summary legislation is now in force and is designed to prevent address only searches for the tracing of individuals. This legislation makes it a legal requirement that we record each search as a separate transaction and we are therefore obliged to charge for and record every name and every separate address searched as a separate transaction. In practice this means that you will be charged a Credit even if the details you search fail to fully confirm or trace the intended subject of your enquiry. All credit reference agencies providing data on UK individuals are now required to comply with this new legislation.

There are two options available to landlords:-

Standard Tenant Vetting

This service is the most popular service which costs £4.95+VAT on-line. It is usually quite sufficient particularly if a tenant has resided at their current address for a year or more. When a check is carried out on a prospective tenant, only the provided address of the prospective tenant is checked for ccj’s etc.

If you want to check all known addresses that appear on the report, use the extended tenant vetting service below.

The cost can be passed to the person being checked.

Read more

Extended Tenant Vetting

This service costing £14.95+VAT is the same as the standard vetting service but it also checks ALL known previous addresses for the one fee.

The cost can be passed to the person being checked.

 

Read more

Sample TVS Report

Click here to see a sample report

Where does the information in the Tenant Vetting Service reports come from?

  • The Electoral Roll
  • County Court Judgments (England and Wales)
  • Scottish Decrees (Scotland)
  • Credit Information shared among the UK’s major financial institutions and retailers
  • Council of Mortgage Lenders records on repossessions
  • CIFAS (The UK’s Fraud Prevention Service) provides information about applications for credit suspected to be fraudulent.
  • GAIN (Gone Away Information Network) shares information on customers with outstanding debts who have moved home without providing a forwarding address.

 

In addition to using the tenant vetting service, you may wish to consider using the free of charge landlord referencing service.