Employers are not the only ones who like to conduct a personal background check before they take someone under their wing. Landlords also like to conduct criminal checks and credit background checks before they let someone live in one of their properties. By checking to see if a future tenant has a criminal past or a poor credit history, property owners can avoid a wealth of problems down the road.

Criminal checks are not quite as common among landlords today, but credit background checks are very common. The one thing that property owners or managers must remember when they conduct this kind of personal background check is that permission is required. Searching through a person's personal history requires their name and Social Security number, though, so it's really not possible to do background checks without the applicant knowing about it.

When landlords have a large number of applicants for their rental property, credit background checks can be somewhat expensive. Criminal checks are even more expensive in large quantities, which is why they are not so popular for most property owners. Most landlords have their prospective tenants cover the costs for the credit screening, though, through a fee of somewhere around $25. They can legally do this, but they cannot legally require them to pay for their own criminal check.

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