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You just don’t know who really walks into the doors of your rental property without doing a tenant background check. These days you cannot entrust your property to just anyone who you think has impressive qualifications based on the information that person supplied to the application form you asked him to fill out. You must verify and check the applicant’s background. You never know, that person may be a murder, a sex offender, or an illegal drug manufacturer. What if that meth manufacturer tenant of yours converts your property into a mini meth lab? When it gets busted by the authorities, you could be facing a real big headache as a landlord – shouldering the costs of cleanup!

Tenant screening

Oh, yes! Roll up your sleeves because you have to do the dirty work. This is if your rental property happens to be in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio or other states which have similar laws regarding the disposal of hazardous rubbish including methamphetamine. The tenants who get caught manufacturing this addictive substance are responsible for the costs of the proper cleanup of the “lab” – your rental property, and the disposal of the dangerous waste. That is, if they can still afford the cleanup after they get busted. If not, you should know that it now becomes your responsibility owing to a recent revision to a law. State and federal funds used to pay for the lab cleanup and the hazardous waste disposal, but that is no longer the case with the amended law.

So if you unwittingly welcomed an illegal drug manufacturer into your property because you scrimped on the much more affordable resident screening, then you may be paying a heavier price. You can be spending $1,000 to $5,000 cleanup costs for the rental-property-turned-meth-lab. You are now burdened with the whole shebang of the cleanup from getting rid of traces of chemical residue to knocking down paraphernalia used in the meth production. At least your name is not dragged into the scandal and legal consequences. Nonetheless, it is a big expense and you cannot expect most insurance companies to reimburse it. That leaves you no choice but to do the dirty job because the chemicals used in meth manufacture are very unsafe and remnants can put persons exposed to it at risk of kidney, liver, and neurological damage, elevated risk of cancer and other health risks. You cannot take in a new tenant with such mess at hand. You need to clean the whole rental unit and ventilation systems, get rid of all traces of chemicals, paint the ceilings and walls, remove carpet, replace air filters, sinks and plumbing.

Authorities are aware that most landlords have no clue that they may be renting out their place to drug manufacturers, but by revising the law, they make the landlords shoulder the cleanup costs as cost of doing business. But I’d say this is the cost of not doing a thorough tenant background check. Hire a reliable resident screening company to ensure that you do not get entangled into such a mess. Run a tenant background check on every applicant and if you uncover criminal records and a history of drug convictions, you can refuse to rent out your property to that person. You can also opt to attend training sessions about meth labs which also discuss tips on identifying a lab and the things to do should you uncover one.