Media Mix: "Do Not Rent" Lists on the Web: Fair or Foul?
an online service makes feedback a potentially dangerous weapon
2007-10-10
By Eric Easter

Deep in the bowels of the Housing for Rent section on Craigslist disgruntled former tenants have been using the free service to post "Do Not Rent From..." listings to strike out at landlords who have not lived up to their obligations and/or expectations, depending on how you see it.
 
While most of those posts eventually are deleted, apparently that underground effort has been effective, at least enough to cause a group of entrepreneurs from the other side to attack back. Now comes donotrentto.com (do not rent to), billed as the landlords' answer to all those scofflaws who stiff them on their monthlies.
 
According to the press release: "By pre-screening your candidates through this site you'll find out if the previous landlord experienced any of the following issues: Late Payments, Non-Payment of Rent, Destruction of Property, Theft, Refusal to Vacant Premises, or any other issues a landlord may have encountered."
 
Now, knowing how trifling some our friends have been over the years (never us of course) when it comes to paying rent, this might not be such a bad thing.  The word "landlord" connotes a whole vassal/serf aristrocacy that has no relationship to the reality of most real estate owners.
 
Once you get beyond the huge high-rises, most rental properties are managed by small-time owners who use the rent to fund second mortgages, retirement, college costs and other critical monthly payments of their own ­ assuming they make a profit at all. As more and more families (especially Black
families) use real estate as their primary and often only wealth-building strategy, information on who will and will not pay your rent could be critical.
 
On the other hand, there are lots of a**hole landlords out there, at least equal to or greater than the number of jerk tenants. And the controls over who gets listed and why seems to be mighty loose indeed. We've all known or heard about sleazeball landlords who sexually harass single women tenants.
What of the ladies who deny them? Do they make the list for trumped-up reasons?
 
And what of the vast majority of tenants who pay rent timely enough, but simply are royal pains who call you at 3am asking you to replace a light bulb? Do they make the list? And is there a legal definition of how many times late constitutes a "history of late payment?" Two times? Three times?
Five?

Even more troubling is the fact that the (temporarily) free form to list bad tenants includes tabs for listing the tenants¹ driver¹s license numbers and the last four digits of Social Security numbers. Though the site marks these as not mandatory, it also notes that this sensitive information makes it easier to distinguish tenants with similar names.
 
Presumably, the fact that donotrentto.com is a paid service would prevent any Joe Blow from registering just to ruin the reputations of people they have grudges against. Except the one-year, $10 registration fee is too low to make that an effective protection. And ironically, by not making sensitive information mandatory, the company further lowers the barrier for anybody to be listed - for any reason.

For their part, a spokesperson for the site said, "When registering, our landlords provide us with certain contact information. If we have a complaint from a tenant, then we follow up with that landlord.  If that landlord cannot provide us with documentation supporting his issue, then we will remove that tenant from our list."
 
That all sounds fine, but how would someone know they were on the list? Or even that the list was the source of a rejected application? Unlike a mortgage lender who has a legal obligation to tell you exactly why you have been denied a loan, a landlord has no requirement to tell you that your name showed up on a website. And what landlord would be stupid enough to open that can of worms.
 
Seems to me that a pretty accurate "Do Not Rent To" and "Do Not Rent From" list already exists. It's called public court records and formal credit checks. While wealthier landlords are certainly apt to be more litigious than tenants, it¹s a safe bet that the worst offenders are easily found among the bevy of legal judgments filed in our legal system. Once you step outside the realm of public record, you open the door to subjective opinion without appropriate redress.  Sure, it may cost quite a bit more than $10 to access those records, but you get what you pay for.
 
Give it to donotrentto.com, however. At the least, they've succeeded in creating the single best commercial for home ownership in a long time.
 
Eric Easter is Chief of Digital Strategy for Johnson Publishing Company. He writes on media, tech and politics for ebonyjet.com.