Tenants: verify before signing, trace after the departure

Written by Guillaume Pouillier, CNAPS-licensed private detective, licence no. AGD 095-2024-03-06-20190240581 · Last updated: July 15, 2026

Two moments concentrate the landlord’s risk: tenant selection, where fake files proliferate, doctored payslips and phantom employers in support, and the conflictual exit, when the tenant vanishes leaving arrears and damage. On both fronts our agency brings the same thing: verified facts, within the strict legal framework, for private landlords, family property companies and managing agents. This page covers the fraud, the lawful checks, the tracing, and the third front, unauthorised subletting.

Rental-application fraud: how big, and what does it look like?

Payslips generated online, fake employment contracts, doctored tax notices, unreachable or complicit employers, straw guarantors: the fake rental file has become an industry served by specialised outfits, and it targets tight markets like Paris first.

The tight-market paradox: the more competitive the selection, the more the honest applicant polishes his file, and the more the fraudster professionalises his. Online services sell “complete files” with coherent payslips, attestations and phone numbers answered by accomplices playing the employer.

Yet a tenant who entered on a fake file is generally discovered at the first unpaid rent, when the very real cost of eviction proceedings starts running. Upstream verification costs a fraction of that litigation. And it works both ways: an application confirmed as genuine lets you commit to a good tenant faster than competing landlords still hesitating on instinct, in a tight market, verified confidence is a speed advantage as much as a shield. The best files, in our experience, are also the quickest to confirm.

What can we lawfully verify about an applicant?

The coherence and authenticity of the documents the applicant himself handed you: the employer’s reality, the payslips’ plausibility, the guarantor’s existence and substance, a verifiable rental history. The framework: the decree-fixed list of admissible documents, the GDPR and non-discrimination.

One clear limit: selection must never slide into discrimination (origin, family situation, health…). Our checks bear on document authenticity and solvency, nothing else, and document that scope, which also protects the landlord.

The tenant left without an address: what to do, in what order?

First locate him, without an address, neither service nor seizure works, then assess his solvency to choose between proceedings and write-off, finally enforce through the enforcement officer. Our location report feeds every step, including calling on the guarantor.

The moonlight flit paralyses everything: the demand for payment comes back undelivered, judgment is obtained by default but cannot be enforced, the guarantor contests for lack of elements. Debtor tracing applied to tenancies follows a proven trajectory: exploitation of the rental file (often rich in starting points), documentary and digital trail, field verification of the new address.

The guarantor deserves the same treatment: it is often he, solvent and locatable, who pays in the end, provided his situation is documented before he organises it. In rental files, the guarantor’s address and employer collected at signature are gold two years later: another argument for keeping application files complete and archived, whatever the tenancy’s outcome. We routinely rebuild locations from nothing more than a guarantor’s commitment letter and an old payslip header.

Subletting and fraudulent occupancy: the third front

The official tenant no longer lives there, but his lease continues: unauthorised tourist or classic subletting, lodging against unofficial rent, a flat turned into a clandestine furnished rental. Our findings identify the actual occupants and the chronology, the foundation of termination.

The lost rent is only part of the harm: the landlord no longer knows who occupies his property, his insurance may be weakened, and the co-owners turn against him. Our subletting investigations combine occupancy findings, platform monitoring and cross-checks, down to the report that grounds termination and, where applicable, restitution of the sub-rents collected.

The same set-up serves social landlords and owners under the 1948 Act, regimes where personal occupancy conditions the tenant’s protection.

How does each assignment unfold, and how fast?

Applicant verification: 48 to 72 hours, aligned with your signing calendar. Tracing a departed tenant: from a few days to three weeks. Subletting findings: a two-to-six-week campaign depending on rotation. A written quote precedes every assignment.

1. Scoping. Your situation, your documents, your deadline: each assignment has its tempo, pre-signature verification cannot wait, a findings campaign is planned.

2. Investigation. Documentary and open sources first, fieldwork after, proportionate to the stakes.

3. Report. Factual and dated: either it validates the applicant or the address, or it documents the fraud, in both cases you decide on facts.

4. Next steps. Transmission to your counsel or enforcement officer; our reports are calibrated for their acts.

Private landlord, family company, managing agent: who verifies what?

The private landlord verifies once, for the dwelling on which his own mortgage sometimes depends; the family property company protects a common estate; the managing agent industrialises verification to secure his liability as agent. Three needs, one methodological base.

For the private landlord, the stakes are existential: a single tenant, often a loan to repay, and eviction proceedings that can drag on. Verifying the finalist’s file is his cheapest insurance.

For the managing agent, the question is liability: the principal will blame him for the defaulting tenant a verification would have set aside. Our 72-hour circuit slots into his process without slowing it, and the report documents his diligence.

As for family property companies, they combine both logics, an estate to protect, a governance to document, and appreciate a neutral report that spares the family debates over everyone’s “intuition”. In all three cases, the deliverable is the same: facts, dated and sourced, on which the decision can safely rest.

Two typical files, anonymised

A perfect application whose “employer” shared its phone number with three other files in the same building; a tenant vanished with fourteen months of arrears, found through her residential parking permit.

The triple-employed employer. A managing agent verifies three applications for neighbouring lots. The “employers”, three different companies, share the same mobile number and the same domiciliation address. The outfit behind the files is identified; the three applications are set aside before signature, and the matter reported.

The tenant with the faithful parking permit. Gone without an address and owing fourteen months, she had cancelled everything, except her residential parking permit, renewed in a neighbouring district. Field verification confirms the new home; service goes out, wage garnishment follows, and the arrears are cleared over eighteen months. The location took four days; the file had been dormant for two years. Most “untraceable” tenants are, in reality, simply unsearched, the leads sit in the rental file the landlord already holds, waiting for somebody who knows how to read them.

How much does it cost?

Verifying a rental applicant falls under administrative enquiries: from €350 (excl. VAT) per file. Tracing a departed tenant follows the same scale, completed if needed by a solvency opinion (€1,600 excl. VAT max). Subletting findings at a flat fee per campaign, free written quote.

For managing agents and multi-unit landlords, a degressive grid and a short circuit (file sent, report within 72 hours) integrate verification into your selection process without slowing it down.

See the full price list.

Frequently asked questions