A background check can be useful, but I think the usefulness of a credit check can be overstated. There are a lot of potentially good tenants out there who have gotten themselves into a bind at one point or another and have damaged credit. Avoid serial non-payers, but if you’re renting a lower-end property you’ll have to trust your gut, because these properties, almost by definition, will tend to attract applicants with “less than perfect credit” as the sub-prime ads say.