Although getting tenants is an exciting and fun prospect, the problem many inexperienced real estate developers have is that not all possible tenants are worth your time.
Remember, you're leasing a property that you own, and any damage or problems caused by rowdy or inconsiderate tenants will be on your shoulders.
It's often cited throughout the world of real estate that performing a "criminal records check" is one of the most essential things you can do, as this will allow you to screen potential trouble-makers out.
However, performing a reliable & fast criminal records lookup is actually quite difficult if you don't know what these checks involve, or how they work.
Criminal records checks are 100% legal and are used in a huge number of different instances.
The likes of potential employers, new partners, parents and school teachers use them to find out the truth about someone's past, as well as any defects in their character...
meaning that if you want to be able to see if a potential tenant is suitable for your property, you should be looking to use one too.
Performing a criminal records check is all about locating the public records that someone will have stored on file from the government, which will indicate any possible criminal activity in their past.
"Criminal Records" are simply the likes of court records, sheriff's department records, driving offence details, arrest warrants, prison inmate records and other incriminating files.
These are stored publicly, which makes it quite easy to find the information you need.
  There are two ways to perform a reliable criminal records check.
The first is to use what's known as official "public records" websites, which are hosted by the government.
These sites will give you access to individual types of record, and are generally free to view.
You can find these records by looking for "your state" + _____ records into Google.
The government sites that come up in these searches should have a "records search" facility, that will allow you to identify any criminal records that someone had.
The records you should look for in a criminal records check include:

• court records
• prison inmate lists
• most wanted state records
• sheriff's department records 
• driving offences

Although looking through government websites is free, it's not the best way to find criminal records information, as it often takes a long time and almost never reveals the details you need.
Instead, it's recommended that you use one of the "professional records lookup services" that are now extremely popular online.
These services basically work by buying up all the records from around the country and then compiling them into one central database.
After that, they will then allow people to search for the information they require, which will reveal all the criminal records details they had in their past.
These sites are much more reliable and are used by most real estate developers to check potential tenants.