New Crime-Free Certification Program Aids Single Family Rental Owners, Small Landlords

by | Dec 27, 2010 | Rental Property Management Tips

Increasingly, law enforcement officials are finding that crime spreads throughout neighborhoods from apartment communities to condominium rentals and then to single family home rentals, according to the International Crime Free Association.

This is especially true for:

Organized crime
Marijuana growers
Methamphetamine labs
Gang violence 

According to the ICFA, criminals prefer the privacy, extra storage, and absence of daily on-site property management in single family residences and privately-managed properties.

A private landlord can soon find they are in over their heads when it comes to preventing serious criminal activities on or around their rental properties. The problems cannot be solved by law enforcement intervention alone because of laws protecting the landlord-tenant relationship and individual privacy.

This reality served as the impetus for the same law enforcement experts who formed the very popular Crime Free Multi-Housing Program for apartment managers to developed a special community-based solution for single family and smaller landlords — the Crime Free Rental Housing Program.

The Crime Free Rental Housing Program consists of three phases, including education, individual property risk assessment, and community networking, completed under the supervision of local law enforcement. Homeowners and property managers can become individually certified after completing training in each phase. The rental property becomes certified upon successful completion of all three phases. Benefits of joining the program can include:

Lower maintenance and repair costs,
Increased property values, and
Reduced exposure to civil liability.

The police department keeps the certification on file, and the Certificate can be used for marketing the rental property to tenants, the property management community or the Chamber of Commerce.

The original Crime Free Multi-Housing Program, created in 1992, has yielded impressive results for participating landlords, including significant reductions in police calls, higher marketability of rental units, increased property values, and lower insurance costs.

Participating landlords also report that the program has aided them in developing stronger ties with local law enforcement, and within their own rental communities.

For more information about Crime Free Certification, contact your local police or sheriff’s department.

This post is provided by Tenant Verification Service, Inc., helping landlords reduce the risks of renting with fraud prevention tools that include Tenant Screening, Tenant Background Checks, (U.S. and Canada), as well as Criminal Background Checks, and Eviction Reports (U.S. only).

Click Here to Receive Landlord Credit Reports.

Disclaimer: The information provided in this post in not intended to be construed as legal advice, nor should it be considered a substitute for obtaining individual legal counsel or consulting your local, state, federal or provincial tenancy laws.

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