I’ve rented rooms from several different people over the years and I’ve never been screened. Lucky for them, I wasn’t a problem tenant. However, I had some crazy experiences with other roommates in the same house. I’m guessing those people were never screened, either.
When I bought my own house and put a spare room up for rent, I always thought I could rely on intuition to determine who would be a good match for a housemate. I thought I could definitely spot a problem housemate, unlike my former landlords.
However, after several direct experiences – and reading about other people’s experiences far worse than mine – I’ve decided that tenant screening is critical.
Here are some of the experiences I’ve had that made me come to this conclusion.
1. The rollerblade thief
I used to rollerblade when I was younger and one day I came home to find my older roommate – he was about 40 – tearing it up on the backyard cement pad in my rollerblades. Apparently, he had gone into my room and pulled them out of my closet when I left to go to my classes.
What makes this story worse is they didn’t even fit him. He tried them on before and they were about two sizes too small. I guess he was desperate to roll around!
2. The disappearing blender
While working a barista gig that required early hours, I would blend a protein shake for breakfast every day before heading to work. It was the only way I could prevent myself from eating carrot cake for breakfast every morning. My housemate, who was the main tenant in the house, gave me a spot on the counter for my blender. Everything was great for about two days.
Then she pounded on my bedroom door, visibly upset. She was completely distraught over the fact that my blender base was black and it didn’t match her red kitchen décor. She pleaded with me to get a red blender, and I did, thinking that would be the end of it.
A week later I went to make my breakfast and couldn’t find my blender. When I got home, I asked her where my blender was. She told me she put it in the laundry room. I asked her why, and she had no explanation other than she felt the laundry room was a better location for my blender.
There are plenty of good questions you can ask applicants to weed out certain mismatched traits. However, I don’t think there’s any way to know if your housemate will move your kitchen appliances into the laundry room. You might be out of luck on catching this kind of red flag.
3. The car title thief
The same housemate who moved my blender into the laundry room let her older brother move into the house; she converted the dining room into his bedroom. He started bringing people over and one of them was pretty sketchy. His friend claimed to be a veterinarian who loved animals, but the dogs wouldn’t go near her.
On Easter Sunday, I came home and found the entire house had been ransacked and some items were missing. It turns out, his new “friend” had been casing the house and broke in when nobody was home. She stole my roommate’s expensive purses, electronics, money, and the title to my car along with my valet car keys.
Her brother had a criminal history with felony convictions for drugs, theft, burglary, and armed robbery. He had been clean from drugs for a long time, but the company he kept was still on the sketchy side.
The lesson or me was that sometimes people with a criminal history who have changed their ways have not stopped hanging out with people who are still criminals. When you take on a housemate with a criminal past, they might be safe, but they might not have good judgment about the company they keep.
4. The piano player
I rented a room from my mom’s bandmate for a while and had no idea what I was getting myself into. Every night, around 10 pm, she’d start playing the piano and singing in a high-pitched, screechy voice until 3 am. I needed to be in bed by 9 pm to get up at 5 am for work, but there was no compromise. She was retired, but insisted she had to practice through the night and into the morning.
If only I had asked what her schedule was like before I moved in. It didn’t occur to me that anyone would do that when living with a housemate. I was wrong.
It could have been worse
My experiences could have been far worse. At least I didn’t have to deal with violent or destructive housemates. However, I will never accept a housemate (or rent a room) without performing a thorough tenant screening process!
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This content is sponsored by Larry Alton.
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