Apartment Rental Question

[Anonymous]

I ran 2 tenant backround checks on myself as I am going to be moving to new apartment soon.  The report indicated that a former landlord filed a demand with a New York City Civil Court in 2006 for late payment.  I was never served with the demand and could not find the case or demand for payment when I went to the Court to research the problem.  There is no Judgement ... nothing.   The demand for payment is not on any of the major 3 credit reports; however, I am concerned that I will be denied an apartment because of this record.

So here are the questions: (a) is there any way for me challenge this incorrect information, (b) is there some sort of central database that these tenant background search companies pull their information from (maybe Lexis Nexis), and (c) who can I make the challenge to.

I know this is a bit off of the credit topic ... but it seems that these companies are completely rogue and outside of the Credit Reporting Laws.

[RobertEG]

You have hit the nail on the head.  Somone reported negative information to the CRA that is definately derogatory to you, and you have the right to dispute it.

But the question is, who reported it, and exactly what did they report?  Chances are that the landlord did not report this directly to the CRA.  There are businesses that review public records, and provide them to parties who may report them to the CRA.  The best way to dispute this is to file a direct disptue with the reporting party, but you are clearly at a disadvantage in that you probably dont know exactly who they are, and what they reported.

So, my suggestion, in order to get to the root of the problem, is to clearly identify who reported, and what they reported.

The FCRA gives you the means to do this.  Under FCRA 609(a)(1), you have the right to request, direclty from the CRA, any item of information included in your credit file, as well as the name of the party who reported it. Such requests require the payment of a processing fee under FCRA 612(f), which is currently $10.50.

So my advice is to start with a letter under FCRA 609(a)(1) sent to the CRA, along with a check for $10.50, and find out who the responsible reporting party is, and exaclty what they reported. 

From there, you can file a direct disptue with them.

[Anonymous]

Were you ever late on rent and received a pay or vacate notice?

[Anonymous]

Robert,

I will send the suggested letter to all three credit agencies and report the results.  I take it that even though it is not on my official credit report, the credit agencies still have the information in my general file and report it when a landlord pays for a "tenant history" report.  

Also, are there data reporting companies other than the Big Three that keep this information and report it?  If so, who are they and are they regulated?

I really appreciate your response.  I worked a long time to fix my credit and to have this (which is not even reported on my credit report) is very frustrating.

Thrix

[Anonymous]

Guiness,

I was in fact late on my rent (about 45 days).  I may have received a pay or vacate (it was a while ago) and I cerntainly received a couple of nasty letters.  I stayed in the apartment for about 3 years following the trouble period without incident and was paid in full for that entire period.

Thrix

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Guiness,

I was in fact late on my rent (about 45 days).  I may have received a pay or vacate (it was a while ago) and I cerntainly received a couple of nasty letters.  I stayed in the apartment for about 3 years following the trouble period without incident and was paid in full for that entire period.

Thrix

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The reason I was asking is because if you did receive a pay or vacate, the landlord probably started eviction proceedings.  If you paid the rent and they stopped the process of the actual eviction, the other information may still be there.

[Anonymous]

Guiness,

That may be what happened, but when I went to the Court to the Court I could not find any paper work.  I guess I go back to question, what can I do when I do not even know how the information was obtained.  Who can I discuss getting the information removed?  Will this information get reported forwever?

Thrix

[AndySoCal]

Where and how did you run the tenant background checks on yourself?

[Anonymous]

Andy,

One was called American Owners Apartment Association.   The second site was is called on-site.  After you asked the question, I went back to the sites and it seems they run some sort of check in connection with Experian.  I then did a little more research and found that Experian seems to have purchased a company called RentBureau , which actually seems to collect the data.

Thrix

[AndySoCal]

I would go back to whoever is reporting that information and dispute and se if it can corrected/ updated.