As a landlord, it’s important to know if your prospective tenant has ever been evicted so you can avoid any potential conflicts. Unfortunately, accessing eviction data in most jurisdictions isn’t an easy task. You would have to search local court records manually, ask the tenant’s previous landlord (and trust they’re a reliable reference), or rely on the tenant themselves to be upfront about a past eviction.
SingleKey’s expanded public record search takes the manual effort out of this process by capturing valuable eviction data, along with criminal history, in one place for you to review. Here’s where you can find this information on our Tenant Screening Report and what details are included.
What is SingleKey’s public record search?
The public record search is a feature of the Tenant Screening Report that scans open databases like Openroom, CanLII, and SOQUIJ to see if there’s a match in their court records with the name of the rental applicant. Here’s an example of how this data is summarized in a report so you can quickly spot warnings and potential red flags:
Eviction court records from trusted sources
The public record search gives landlords and property managers insights into a tenant’s relevant legal history, including evictions or criminal activity, without having to check multiple databases manually. This data is securely accessed and collected from the following sources:
- Openroom’s crowdsourced tenancy court orders from across Canada
- CanLII’s extensive respository of judicial decisions from all Canadian juridiction
- SOQUIJ’s database of decisions from the judicial and administrative tribunals of Québec
More court decision details
If there’s a potential match with the rental applicant’s name and any of the databases in our public records search, you’ll get additional details, like the name of the court case and the date it was filed, in the public record search results section of the Tenant Report:
Clicking on each result expands the court record for a summary of the case (if available). You’ll also get a direct link to the source for full details. Here’s a sample result pulled from CanLII:
Understanding public record search results
Because the results from the public record search come from both self-reported information and publicly-accessible databases, there may be a mismatch. Make sure you review the results carefully to confirm the applicant’s identity before making a decision about their rental application.
Our final thoughts
Knowing who your prospective tenant is and assessing whether they’ll be a reliable renter are the goals of any thorough tenant screening process. Our expanded public record search is just one of the tools we give you as a landlord and property manager to help you uncover potential tenant red flags. Learn more about gathering all the facts you need to choose your next tenant wisely with a Tenant Screening Report from SingleKey.
