In the past few years, representations and pressures from your Association were needed so that the owners of rental residences in Quebec could preserve certain rights as essential as the one enabling to check the credit rating and the behaviour of our candidate-tenants. The residential real-estate owner has the right to verify the credit rating of a candidate on the condition that the latter gives his written assent.
It is absolutely essential that your future tenant can sign a rental offer all the while granting you the right to do a pre-rental investigation which includes the credit file, verification with the current landlord, employment confirmation, etc… It is absolutely prohibited to have a credit record revealed without the assent of the person concerned.
As landlord-member of the APQ, you must also sign a form by which you commit yourself to keep the information obtained on your candidate confidential. It is also important not to reveal or give a copy of the credit record to your candidate. If you judge that his credit is not sufficient to rent your apartment to him, it suffices to respond to him/her simply that it is refused. You cannot give him/her the information contained in the credit record. If your candidate wishes to consult his card, he must do it by communicating himself directly with the credit office.
We believe that, as owner of rental residences, we must scrupulously comply with these rules in residential renting, for quite an important reason, which is to preserve our assets, in order to better protect ourselves.
Lastly, the APQ always puts at your disposal software which makes it possible to obtain online your credit record, a unique and exclusive system for our members.
Have a Good Summer Season!