Criminal as tenant?

gildan

Hi, just looking for advice. We have a property to let and got a letting agency in to vet the prospective tenants. They told us they found a good tenant and he had good refs. A quick google of tenant's name revealed that he has many convictions.

We were gobsmacked, if we could google this guy and find his history in 2 minutes and the letting agency didn't and put him forward what can we do? he could have faked his references, really don't want a career criminal in my property. Next step if the agency fails us will be a solicitor but any of you got any advice for us? what can we do? Still reeling from this news.

Claw Hammer

Send the results of your googling to the agency and ask is this the person they let the house to. Ask for copies of any references they obtained.

pwurple

Well, you haven't signed that letting agreement have you?

Or did they sign it as your agent?

What does your contract look like with them? It looks like a fairly basic check was missed.

gildan

they signed the letting agreement for us, after telling us they sourced a suitable tenant. We called them and asked them about the refs, which they again said were good and we told them to google the tenant. Agency people sounded shocked and could they get back to us. we also emailed them about this so we'd have it in writing.

Screening was abysmal, no red flags raised for them but i'm just trying to sort out what can be done?

Claw Hammer

The first thing to check is if the references are genuine.

Browney7

Are you certain it's the same person and not just a common name?

Tiddlypeeps

Have they actually moved into the property yet?

Mrs OBumble

Tiddlypeeps wrote: »

Have they actually moved into the property yet?

If the identity is confirmed, then see what your insurance company think of the situation.

Having someone with criminal convictions in the house may invalidate your insurance.

Sleeper12

Mrs OBumble wrote:

Having someone with criminal convictions in the house may invalidate your insurance.

Usually if you had the policy in place before they moved in you are covered. The only difficulty is if you knew about the criminal at the time of taking out the policy and hid this from the insurance company.

There are 10s of thousands of people with criminal records living in rented accommodation throughout Ireland. LLs can't be expected to know about someone's past when that person isn't required by law to tell the LL. OPs agents have the references. This is more than enough to keep the insurance company happy

ted1

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

If the identity is confirmed, then see what your insurance company think of the situation.

Having someone with criminal convictions in the house may invalidate your insurance.

I’d imagine that’d be illegal.

dartboardio

Surely there's no need to worry, nothing is confirmed?

Once the agency google the tenant I'm sure they'll get back to you apologising and saying forget about it

sk8board

I had a viewing last month with three prospective tenants.
I googled all three and one had a conviction from about 10 years ago for a racist-motivated assault on a taxi driver - same fella in the court pics etc, the details of the beating were pretty savage.

As it happened he wasn’t the tenant I was choosing anyway, but it was interesting to find and a reminder to always be vigilant.
Incidentally, the breadth of freely available information online to verify a tenants claims is incredible. I’d be muting all social media bar LinkedIn if I was a tenant looking for a house, and definitely applying to have my search history deleted if I had a criminal conviction.