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I have one rental home which represents part of my retirement savings. The amount of money I charged was not my top priority. I have heard so many horror stories about the tenants from hell, or tenant landlord disputes, that my top priority was getting the right tenant in the home. I advertised the home for rent both online and with a sign out front. Each person who wanted to see the home made an appointment. I conducted a tour of the home while doing an interview somewhat disguised as small talk. I spent enough time with each prospective renter to make some general observations. Being a retired cop I could quickly identify the B.S. artists, of which there were many. Some of the most interesting answers were to questions like, ““Why are you moving?” or “What was your last landlord like?” I also listened carefully to the concerns they had, and the words they used to describe their employers.I looked at the way they were dressed, neat and clean or messy and unkept. I continued my conversation with them following them to their car. Look at the way a person keeps their car, inside and out, and you can get an idea of how they will keep your rental home. The last thing I would do is provide them with a rental application. The application was quite detailed accounting for multiple years of employment and I think ten years of history on where they lived. Also, the names of old neighbors who might be references. Each clearly stated that contact information must be provided by way of phone number and street address. I explained that I only had one residence to rent and my goal was finding the best possible fit between renter and home. I also advised that I would continue my search for weeks or longer before selecting a renter.I had numerous prospective renters which I ranked by my own specific criteria as well as my gut instincts. I continued for several months before meeting my current renter. It was an older person with a stable income who was separated and had only about a year of rental history. She told me several horror stories about her landlord who was unresponsive to the needs of the unit, once leaving them with no heat. I got such a good vibe from this person as she toured the home that I offered her the unit very quickly. I did my homework first and agreed the old landlord was a real piece of work.I sent out letters to all the other prospective renters thanking them for their interest and notifying them that the unit was no longer for rent. I also made a mental commitment that I would work to be a great landlord. Right from the beginning, I advised that I would be responsible for even the simplest repairs including changing lightbulbs and adding salt to the water softener. As time went by I would also clear the driveway of snow and complete all yard maintenance, mowing, raking, and trimming the landscaping. Over the past five years, my experience has been great. Rent is always on time, and I think both my tenant and I are happy.I have ignored the experts, and have not raised the rent since the beginning. It’s worth it to me to not get top dollar but to have a great tenant. If and when she ever leaves, the new renter will pay more, but for now, the money is secondary to having a perfect tenant.Author of “One Cop’s Life” available on Amazon.

Large real estate conglomerates have purchased a lot of the apartment complexes across the US and used to have a 0 tolerance policy for any felony conviction, with no time limit.I have a friend with a 20 year old felony drug possession charge who went through in 2015 this and had to search long and hard to find a property owned by a smaller operation. The next problem was most rental properties owned by small business are single family houses or duplexes and will be more expensive than a studio apartment.On April 4th 2016 the department of housing and urban development updated the laws to make this practice effectively illegal.https://www.hud.gov/sites/documents/HUD_OGCGUIDAPPFHASTANDCR.PDFThat being said if multiple people apply for rent, especially with smaller landlords its easy to throw away the one with a felony and there isn’t any way to prove it.Personally with my one property unless there is a history of violence or sex offense I’m not going to blacklist everyone but it is case by case. The guy who got in trouble for any drugs 10+ years ago with a good job and rental history is a completely different situation than say someone who got caught cooking or even using meth within the last few years and might get my property condemned with poison fumes.**UPDATE**HUD does not make laws like Congress. They set guidelines for housing and the link is specifically discrimination guidelines. Violating these guidelines is not a criminal offense but is a civil offence. In context officially denying rental based on a felony is a civil offense (lawsuit). In practice you would have to prove discrimination in a costly lawsuit.

Jon Mixon undoubtedly has the correct answer, but this reminds me of an incident from back in the 1980s when movie rental stores were still a thing.I worked at a place called The Wherehouse. It was a chain of music/software/video rental stores on the US West Coast.This is the chain, but I didn’t work at this particular store (image credit)A customer complained to an assistant manager that the VHS movie he rented was blank. The assistant manager apologized, canceled the fee and gave the customer a different copy of the same movie. He checked the returned movie, saw that it was an authentic copy, but was blank and removed it from circulation.Then the next day he got the same complaint from a different customer. He thought that was odd; two blank videos within two days just didn’t happen. Usually they got a complaint like that once a year, if that. It could only happen if the tape was placed near a source of strong magnetism for an extended period of time, and that only resulted in a corrupted version of the movie, not complete blanking.Then a few days later, he got the same complaint about another movie. And another. They all came from different customers.Out of curiosity, he checked the rental histories on the videos in question. Sure enough, they had all been previously rented by one customer. He also saw that the same customer also purchased lots of boxes of blank VHS tapes, like 12 blank tapes in each case. He bought one of these cases each week.That in itself was odd. Few people needed that many blank tapes.So he checked the returned blank tapes again. Our tapes contained barcodes on adhesive strips. That barcode was scanned when the tape was rented and returned. After closer inspection, he saw that some of the movie labels and barcodes appeared to be slightly torn or applied crookedly. In short, they looked like they had been removed and re-applied. Clearly the customer in question was renting movies, removing the authentic labels and putting them on the blank tapes. He kept the authentic copies and returned the blanks.He contacted Loss Control and told them his findings. They took care of it from there.In short, the police got a search warrant for the customer’s home. Inside they found dozens of boxes of VHS tapes; each tape had a cheap stick-on label with the title of the movie on it written in Sharpie. He also had boxes of blank tapes.I doubt he went to jail, but he undoubtedly had to pay a hefty fine and probably had to pay restitution to The Wherehouse for all the stolen (and ruined) merchandise.Oh yeah. All the movies were porn.This is the quality of most VHS movies from back in the day (image credit)It occurred to me that this wasn’t a very sophisticated scam. He probably didn’t realize we kept track of all our merchandise and customer rental histories via computer. If he had, he probably wouldn’t have attempted it.With a little more work, he could have perhaps stolen our entire catalog of porn videos. All he needed to have done was to copy the authentic movie to the blank tape and return it. The copy would be inferior, but it still would have been more or less watchable. There were anti-copying techniques for tapes back then, but they were rather rudimentary or easily foiled. But they were usually only employed by the larger movie studios, not porn peddlers.Oh, well. A savvy assistant manager and a computer system brought down a small-time criminal mastermind.