Perhaps one of the most essential tasks for a landlord is to find qualified tenants.  If there are no tenants, there would be no point to have a rental property (or a landlord), right?

In some respects, doing a tenant check is much like checking out an applicant before a job interview.  Basically the landlord is making sure that this potential tenant is a qualified renter.  It is an attempt to make sure that the potential tenant will pay their rent on time, take care of their unit, and be a good addition to the rental community.

Quite often the landlord calls each tenant reference and makes sure that the stories portray the person as reliable and dependable.  Great attention is paid to whether or not the references provide consistent stories about the potential tenant - if their stories are not consistent, chances are there could be problems.

The result is that the landlord meets the tenant when they come to apply and has the stories from the references.  At this point they need to make a decision as to whether or not they would be a valuable addition to their rental community.  Though they might not get it right all the time, every good tenant they move into the property they manage, the easier their job gets - so there is some good incentive for them to find good ones.