Rental scare
Horror stories, scammers force landlords to get background checks
WITH some Jamaicans fabricating identities and income levels to secure rental properties, a number of landlords and real estate agents are increasingly relying on background checks to weed out potential criminals and problematic tenants.
The move follows a string of horror stories that homeowners have experienced dealing with tenants who destroyed their property, neglected rental payments, or refused to move out.
Real estate broker and managing director of Red Roof Properties Paulette Pryce, who has been in the industry since 2009, shared that in earlier times it was easier to rent properties because people were honest about their situation and more caring. However, as things and times change she said there has been a noticeable shift to more negative behaviours, and realtors have had to put on their detective hats.
“When we do rentals we ask the prospects to complete a profile form. It will have their name, address, how many are in their family, how many people will be living there with them, do they have pets — things like that — and then we ask for two referees. People sometimes name friends and family. We say, ‘No, we don’t want friends, we want people who know you from a business point of view, like your lecturer or doctor, just somebody who knows you but is not a friend,’ ” said Pryce.
“When we get those [references] we check them but sometimes we co-broke, so if I have the listing but the next agent is the selling agent they should do the profile, background check, and reference check as well. We look at everything. We look at the identification [ID] to see if it is genuine to us, because sometimes a phony ID comes up. Instead of it saying Waterloo Road it will say Waterloo Meadows in Kingston 10, and we know that there is not a Waterloo Meadows in Kingston 10,” she told the Jamaica Observer.
Pryce added that she also goes a step further to check the social media accounts of prospective tenants to verify that their lifestyle aligns with the information presented.
Though the process can be tedious, she said it is effective.
“One of my agents was doing the retrospect and everything, and when she met [the prospective tenant] at the property…he said he lived somewhere before, and where he said he lived he couldn’t have lived there. When it came to choosing the prospect, she told the landlord, ‘I don’t think you should choose this guy because I think that there is something about him that doesn’t seem right.’ She went ahead and chose that person, and he was a scammer. The police were asking us about him, and in the end, his mother gave him up. I think he only paid only two months’ rent,” she shared.
Pryce said it is unfortunate that realtors and landlords have to resort to these measures, but they cannot be naive.
“It’s what you have to do because of the way people are today. You can’t rent to people with a 1920s attitude when you live in 2025. You’re being naive. It is a different world that we’re living in,” she told the Sunday Observer.
Despite the steps taken to secure the right tenant, she warned that people are as “good as the tenant they choose to be when they are in a person’s property”.
“They may be able to afford it, they may pay rent on time, but they might be a horrible tenant, they might be a disruptive tenant. When doing the background checks, if they have rented somewhere before, they must put down their last landlord because why would you not tell me where you lived last? That already rings a bell for me,” Pryce said, adding that landlords must not be hasty in making decisions
“A person may look in the [newspaper], see something that they like and come to them [the landlord] on a Sunday morning, and they’ll take them out there [and] say, ‘I like you’ and they’re in. To me, that’s not good. It could be a mass murderer that you’re renting your property to. That’s too hasty. Just take your time, do it properly, wait for the references to come through,” she urged.
Private investigator and CEO of Prominent Investigations Maurice Richards shared that while he mainly receives requests for background checks from companies for prospective employees, he has also seen a growing number of landlords requesting the service, with about 10 coming to him each month.
He shared that he once had a client who rented their property to a nurse who lived there for two years and only paid the first month’s rent and the deposit.
“Now, whenever she is renting a property, she always calls me to do a background check on the person and ask them to bring a copy of their driver’s licence and other information for me to check and make sure they are in good standing,” said Richards.
He shared that on some occasions, clients have even requested that he visit the community of the prospective tenant.
“I would go to the address and find the previous landlord to find out if they owed any previous rent or anything before they would be qualified to get the new house,” he told the Sunday Observer, adding that he also speaks with residents in the community.
A representative from Guardsman Elite also shared that since offering the service, approximately 30 per cent of the individuals who have called requesting a background check are landlords.
“A lot more persons do call with job-related issues, verification of persons who they would need to employ, but second to that would be with the landlords. They do call us and are very interested. It’s something that is new and persons that are ‘with it’, they do call to get background checks on those persons who they are thinking about renting their property,” said the representative.
“They have had bad experiences with tenants in the past, and sometimes it’s not even bad experiences yet, but they just want to make sure in their minds that this person is okay. Whatever the outcome we get from the background check, they just want to confirm in their minds that, ‘Okay, I am choosing the right person’,” the representative said.
Scarred from horrible experiences with tenants, landlords are now choosing to do background checks before renting their property.
One private investigator shared that clients have requested that he visit the community of prospective tenants before they hand over keys to their property to them.
