30-SECOND Background CHECKS.

• Author: KERVEN, ANNE
• Position: Brief Article

A SafeRent rep talks to a property manager on the phone, entering a prospective tenant's personal data on SafeRent's website. She sends it in white the landlord waits. In less than 30 seconds, SafeRent's Applicant Screening site has checked the prospect's rental history and criminal records; scored the candidate; and spit out advice: Decline.

Normally, that kind of background check takes about two days, said Linda Bush, president of Denver-based SafeRent LLC, which developed the service. SafeRent is intended to cut investigative time and costs, up the pool of qualified rental candidates, and lower bad debt in the nation's $280 million property management market. Apartment managers generally report about one-half of one percent of bad debt each year, but real figures are about 50% higher, Bush said; managers prefer not to have a lot of bad debt on their books and so don't report ancillary costs.

Property managers usually do the check themselves. They only need Internet access and to register. They enter a candidate's data into the appropriate blanks at www.saferent.com, which sends it through a fraud database. If the number has been issued and the holder "isn't dead," Bush said, the data goes to the credit bureaus for an identity search. If that passes, the property manager enters the person's rent, deposit and salary, and it goes back to the credit bureau covering that...