Leasing real estate may be fun, but is entirely dependent on the quality of your tenant.
No-one wants someone who's going to cause trouble, or worse, damage your property.
You need to be sure that you are dealing with someone who has a credible past record, and who is trustworthy...
and the way every professional realtor does that is to use a "criminal background check" on their potential clients.
Criminal records checks are basically where you use public records to identify any problems / criminal history in the tenant, and are used for a wide range of purposes throughout the USA.
From a criminal background check, you can normally identify the likes of someone's past court appearances, any time spent in prison, whether they've been caught with driving offences or if they had any arrest warrants out for them.
If you're able to perform a reliable criminal records check on someone, the fact is that you should be able to get a clear idea of whether they've had any problems in their past, and whether they could potentially have any issues whist living in your property.
  It's advised that you perform a background check on any tenant who is showing serious interest in your unit.
The way to perform one of these criminal records checks is to either use official government websites, or in the case of continual & reliable use, to use a professional site that will compile effective records checks for you.
To give you an idea of how to proceed with one of these criminal lookups, you will generally find the following information inside one:

• Court records
• Arrest Warrants
• Sheriff's Department Records
• Prison Inmate Records
• Property Records

Most people don't realize this, but all the information in a criminal background check is just publicly available information from the government.
If you have the time and know-how, you could perform a lookup yourself by browsing to the various state-operated websites yourself and then trying to find any of the records you require about someone.
If you're on a tight time limit, or need a reliable and trustworthy lookup, then it's recommended that you use one of the professional lookup websites that basically buy all the records they require, and then allow you to search for them.
This will bring up a report which is both up-to-date and reliable, giving you the ability to identify any problems with the tenant instantly.