After telling the story of Jason Winterholler, the Austin American-Statesman offers up the following: “Police said homeowners should do credit and criminal background checks on prospective tenants. They also warned owners to be skeptical of overly favorable deals and resist the urge to skip background checks just because the prospective renters seem nice.”
That advice will seem pretty straightforward to most landlords, even if sometimes it takes a lot of discipline to follow it. There are two things different here from the usual story of this kind. First, this advice is aimed at homeowners who attempt to rent out a property because they can’t sell it.
Most landlords got into the property renting business on purpose. But because of the current housing crisis, we’re suddenly seeing more “accidental landlords,” people who can’t sell their house and figure that renting it would be an option that generates some revenue.
That was Jason Winterholler’s situation. He needed to move to Pasadena from Phoenix in order to take a new job. He tried to sell his house, but the housing market was in the tank, so he decided to rent it out for a while.
He had trouble finding tenants at the rent he wanted, so he was thrilled when a couple showed up who didn’t haggle over the rent and paid the deposit in cash. He took off for his new job feeling like he was lucky. Far from it. It turns out that the couple was up to no good and Jason’s house got trashed.
That’s where we get to the other interesting part of the story. I’ve been around this business for years and I’ve heard of all kinds of bad guys who will rent your property and trash it while they use it. Drug dealers are the most common.
But the nice couple who rented from Jason were fronts for an immigrant smuggling ring that planned to use the Jason’s nice suburban house as a “stash house.” That’s a place where the smuggler stashes his human cargo until he collects his fee and arranges for the immigrants to move on.
It turns out that suburban properties make great stash houses. They’re off the beaten path and often have garages where no one will see fourteen or fifteen illegals climbing out of a van and entering the house.
So, it’s a new twist on an old theme, but the lessons stay the same. You should do a credit and criminal background check on anyone you plan to trust with your property. And when things seem too good to be true, they probably are. Just ask Jason Winterholler.