They Keep On Trying

In the rental business, you run into a LOT of criminals. The funny thing to me is that they constantly lie on their application, thinking that the landlords will not actually check them out. I have this happen on almost a daily basis. Yesterday was no exception. Here's what happened.

Two days ago, I had a couple (shackup couple) look at one of my two bedroom houses. The couple was fairly clean looking but the man initially didn't get out of the car to look at the house with the woman (red flag number one). The woman liked the house and said they would take it. I said "surely your boyfriend wants to see the house", at which point she motioned him into the house. I said hello, but he didn't look me in the eye when he responded (red flag number two). I then went over our screening criteria and asked them if they had any criminal history. As the man started to speak, the woman talked over him and said that he only had one domestic violence charge which was being dismissed (BIG RED FLAG NUMBER THREE). I was very suspicious at this point, but took their application and told them I would call them after I checked it out.

Well, needless to say, they didn't pass. The man had two pages of criminal history. The woman also had several criminal incidents. The woman had also been sued in civil court by a local bank. That was that and I put their application in the REJECTED file.

The next afternoon, she called me and wanted to know if she was accepted. I told her absolutely not and she wanted to know why. I said "because you are both criminals and we don't take criminals." At that, she expressed her anger that I hadn't called her earlier to let her know. That's how this low income criminal scum thinks - it's my fault for not accepting her, even though I told them clearly BEFORE they filled out the application that we don't accept anyone with more than 2 misdemeanors in the past 5 years. Obviously, she didn't think I was serious.