More and more landlords are checking credit reports before they grant leases.  Often they don’t pull standard credit reports, they pull special “trimerge” reports combining data from various sources.

A consumer contacted me because she she was refused an apartment lease based on a “consumer credit and background report” issued by Apartment Owners of America through the website landlordsofamerica.com.  Trans Union Landlord Tenant Report.  The report contained the following heading

#2 National Eviction Search/Landlord Tenant Records: Exact Name Matches (check

carefully)

After that it had information about a state court judgment but that judgment was NOT a landlord tenant case, and it wasn’t an eviction.  The report listed this as coming from Trans Union.

This type of judgment reporting seems designed to be overly inclusive of unrelated judgment reported as eviction records.  NO MATTER WHERE YOU LIVE IN THE UNITED STATES if this happened to you, please contact me through my website www.hoferlawindy.com.

 I will try to network with a NACA member attorney near you to stop this practice.  (Note, for our purposes, it doesn’t matter if it was more than two years ago.)