Phone app helps landlords to screen tenants

A new iPhone app has been launched aimed at helping buy-to-let landlords find out if their prospective tenants are on a blacklist for property damage or unpaid rent.

Lettings specialist Legal 4 Landlords has created the UK's first app for landlords and lettings agents to access up-to-date information on tenants. The app holds a tenant risk list, a nationwide database of more than 4,000 tenants that Legal 4 Landlords has ever dealt with.

By entering the prospective tenant's name and address, the Legal 4 Landlords app will inform landlords of any misdemeanors linked with the tenant.

Sim Sekhon, a director at Legal 4 Landlords, said: "We're approached on a daily basis by landlords wanting to do a quick background check on a prospective tenant. These checks can take time, so we thought it made perfect sense to develop an app which will do this in seconds.

"Unpaid rent in the UK currently amounts to £276m, so landlords need to know if they can trust the tenant they are about to take on."

The Legal 4 Landlords app also advises landlords on evictions, tenant referencing, rent recovery and tracing missing tenants.The free app is on iTunes.