I have been house-hunting and I have seen ‘no evictions’ in a lot of ads. This calls in to question how someone else would know about evictions if a person was inclined to hide them. (no, I have never been evicted. I am just curious)
Is there some sort of registry that tracks evictions? A number you can call or website? TRW or credit site?
How would the owner get someone on that list? Would they have to be a paying customer of the site? Or can anyone call up and say 'this person is deadbeat and I evicted them!"?
Usually the rental application will have a section for “list all the places you’ve lived for the past X years”. You have to provide a contact number. Then they contact all the places you lived for those years and ask if you were evicted.
If you refuse to provide that information or they can’t get in touch with an old landlord, they simply don’t rent to you.
If there was a real, Sheriff’s Deputy - type eviction, there will be an Unlawful Detainer on file in the Court which issued it.
They don’t need to talk to a landlord or agent to find it - it is public record.
As others have mentioned, there will be a court record of the event. If the court found they owed money to the landlord evicting the them it will show up in their credit report.
Usually what happens is the landlord does a credit check on the potential tenant. They see a court finding against them. Look up the court finding see it was for. See it was for an eviction and reject the tenant.
When I worked in rental property management, we always ran a credit report and criminal history record on potential tenants. And we had a very good relationship with our local cops, who could tell us the criminal dirt on anyone.