# Surrender your driver's license to tour apartment complex: Is this common? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [December 18, 2011, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surrender-your-drivers-license-to-tour-apartment-complex-is-this-common/606633 "2011-12-18T13:17:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![control-z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/eada6e/32.png) [@control-z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/control-z)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2012, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surrender-your-drivers-license-to-tour-apartment-complex-is-this-common/606633/81 "2012-10-01T19:06:03Z")
It’s amazing how almost every response to this thread is either “always” or “never.” ---
**Author:** ![Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/96bed5/32.png) [@Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patty_O_Furniture)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2012, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surrender-your-drivers-license-to-tour-apartment-complex-is-this-common/606633/82 "2012-10-01T19:30:32Z")
So I assume that, at some point in the past, some property manager was murdered and raped (not necessarily in that order, but you never know) while giving a prospective tenant a look-see at the vacancy. You’d think that would be documented somewhere. ---
**Author:** ![Yarster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/7c8e57/32.png) [@Yarster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yarster)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2012, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surrender-your-drivers-license-to-tour-apartment-complex-is-this-common/606633/83 "2012-10-01T23:36:33Z")
I lived in an apartment in a heavily Filipino area in San Diego for a decade and they made you surrender your DL for a tour when I took it. I am surprised at the people who have an issue with this. My thought was “Hey, this place has good security practices in addition to the fact it is gated. I like that!”. I have no doubt there are other reasons for doing this as well. It establishes you as a “real customer” as opposed to someone who is ‘just looking’, much the same way prices are often hidden on jewelry or watches in a display case at a store. It forces you to listen to their whole sales pitch as well. Finally, and I say this in all seriousness, it might keep out people the owner may see as ‘undesireable’. For example, San Diego has a heavy Hispanic population, some of which are illegal aliens. It is not uncommon to hear stories of someone legally renting an apartment, then subletting it to several illegals who share the rooms to make the rent. As you might guess, many of the legal folks may have the cash required to rent, but lack a driver’s license because they take the bus, ergo…no DL to take the tour. If they ask EVERYONE for a DL to take the tour, and you don’t have one, well then it’s not discrimination, right? Although, it does definitely eliminate a poorer class of individual in this case they are specifically trying to exclude from their complex. ---
**Author:** ![Asimovian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asimovian/32/172_2.png) [@Asimovian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asimovian)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2012, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surrender-your-drivers-license-to-tour-apartment-complex-is-this-common/606633/84 "2012-10-02T00:16:31Z")
> [@Pyper](#): > > Wow, I’ve never heard of this. I live in Los Angeles, and frequently nobody even shows up to give you a tour. They either a) leave the empty apartment unlocked and you enter and give yourself a tour, b) there is an electronic lock on the door and they give you a code, or c) you get the key from a neighbor. I’ve experienced the first two scenarios in LA, as well, but I’ve also been asked a couple of times to surrender a license. Honestly, I didn’t think much of it at the time. In those cases, it was a larger, newer complex where the individual I was dealing with was the only person (that I could see) working in the building. He or she took the license, put it away, then locked the door to the office and went on the tour with me. I never had a thought about shenanigans going on with my license while we were galavanting around the building. ---
**Author:** ![Crazyhorse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crazyhorse/32/31_2.png) [@Crazyhorse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crazyhorse)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2012, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surrender-your-drivers-license-to-tour-apartment-complex-is-this-common/606633/85 "2012-10-02T01:10:11Z")
> [@Patty\_O\_Furniture](#): > > So I assume that, at some point in the past, some property manager was murdered and raped (not necessarily in that order, but you never know) while giving a prospective tenant a look-see at the vacancy. You’d think that would be documented somewhere. It has definitely happened many times. > [@](#): > > Cary, N.C. — A Raleigh man has been charged with raping a real estate agent on Sunday while she was showing him a house in Cary, police said. [Link](http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/5952316/) > [@](#): > > Twenty-four-year old Salih Mahdi has been charged in the rape that occurred at the Magnolia Apartments on Harbin Road in Morrow. Detectives say he asked the agent to show him an apartment and then raped and beat her, damaging her eye socket. [Link](http://www.wsbradio.com/news/news/local/possible-serial-rapist-behind-bars-clayton-county/nPNRb/) > [@](#): > > Humble Texas - Police are searching for a man with distinctive tattoos who is accused of attacking and raping a leasing agent while she was giving him an apartment tour. Police said the man asked to view an apartment. The leasing agent took the man on tour and as soon as they were alone, she was attacked and sexual assaulted, investigators said. [Link](http://www.click2houston.com/news/Woman-raped-while-showing-apartment-to-prospective-tenant/-/1735978/7651518/-/nsphvwz/-/index.html) > [@](#): > > On Saturday, March 22nd, 1980, Offender #1, Jay Taylor retained a Real Estate Agent to look at homes for sale in the $200K to $300K price range in the southern Platte County area … and ordered the home owners and Real Estate agent to lie down on the floor where they were all bound using plastic flex-cuffs … The female home owner was forcibly taken upstairs and made to divulge the location of valuables and was there raped and sodomized by Jon M. Taylor … Jon Marc Taylor, using the same scheme, posed as a potential Renter at an Apartment complex. While the leasing agent showed Jon Marc Taylor the vacant apartment, he drew his weapon and forcibly raped and sodomized her while holding her against her will. [Link](http://www.plattesheriff.org/pcspress/pressrelease.php?id=33) Every apartment in the US that I have ever viewed required that I leave my ID in the office. I never really questioned it as it seems to be a pretty obvious risk a leasing agent takes by going alone into an empty, private residential setting with any stranger who walks in off the street claiming to want to see an apartment. I don’t know why they generally insist on the actual ID instead of just making a copy but in some states privacy laws might discourage copying or recording personal information while it is fine to require the license itself temporarily to establish someone’s identity. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2012, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surrender-your-drivers-license-to-tour-apartment-complex-is-this-common/606633/86 "2012-10-04T03:08:15Z")
> [@Crazyhorse](#): > > It has definitely happened many times. I can’t help but notice that one of your four for-instances is over 32 years old. ---
**Author:** ![Crazyhorse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crazyhorse/32/31_2.png) [@Crazyhorse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crazyhorse)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2012, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surrender-your-drivers-license-to-tour-apartment-complex-is-this-common/606633/87 "2012-10-04T03:21:06Z")
> [@RTFirefly](#): > > I can’t help but notice that one of your four for-instances is over 32 years old. > [@](#): > > Originally Posted by **Patty O’Furniture** > So I assume that, at some point in the past, … I wasn’t aware there was a statute of limitations on examples from ‘some point in the past’ but, yeah, one of them is. I just picked the first four applicable results of many more that can be found with a simple google search. ---
**Author:** ![cornflakes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9d8465/32.png) [@cornflakes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cornflakes)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2012, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surrender-your-drivers-license-to-tour-apartment-complex-is-this-common/606633/88 "2012-10-04T03:36:19Z")
This may be nitpicking, but is my license even mine to let them have? I thought that the state gave me a license to drive, and it’s not mine to let someone else have. Not that it matters. I wouldn’t let them have my license in the first place. ---
**Author:** ![Uncle\_Brother\_Walker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/f08c70/32.png) [@Uncle\_Brother\_Walker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uncle_Brother_Walker)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2012, 4:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surrender-your-drivers-license-to-tour-apartment-complex-is-this-common/606633/89 "2012-10-04T04:54:21Z")
or mayve the response “I took the bus to get here.” What would they do. Another alternative I thought of was to turn it around. “Fine, you can have my DL. I will need a copy of your business license as well. Could you give that to me first while I dig my license out of my purse/wallet?” See how they respond to that. ---
**Author:** ![drewtwo99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d07c76/32.png) [@drewtwo99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drewtwo99)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2012, 7:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surrender-your-drivers-license-to-tour-apartment-complex-is-this-common/606633/90 "2012-10-04T07:33:07Z")
Hmm… the point about the driver’s license not being yours to give away to someone else might be very poignant. I would suppose this varies by state, but it doesn’t seem outrageous that a strict reading of the law in certain states might preclude handing your license over to strangers to keep and lock away. ---
**Author:** ![chizzuk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e36b37/32.png) [@chizzuk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chizzuk)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2012, 7:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surrender-your-drivers-license-to-tour-apartment-complex-is-this-common/606633/91 "2012-10-04T07:45:49Z")
> [@Asimovian](#): > > I’ve experienced the first two scenarios in LA, as well, but I’ve also been asked a couple of times to surrender a license. Honestly, I didn’t think much of it at the time. In those cases, it was a larger, newer complex where the individual I was dealing with was the only person (that I could see) working in the building. He or she took the license, put it away, then locked the door to the office and went on the tour with me. I never had a thought about shenanigans going on with my license while we were galavanting around the building. I had to give them my license at one apartment (the nicer one) and not at another (a much shabbier one). I had had to do the same thing getting an apartment in Maryland, so I didn’t even question it. I chose the nicer apartment and they currently also take your license as collateral for borrowing their furniture dolly, to ensure that you return it in a timely fashion. ---
**Author:** ![purplehorseshoe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/purplehorseshoe/32/2996_2.png) [@purplehorseshoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/purplehorseshoe)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2012, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surrender-your-drivers-license-to-tour-apartment-complex-is-this-common/606633/92 "2012-10-04T18:08:09Z")
I still don’t understand why people are freaked out by the idea of even handing over your ID. My name, address etc. is a matter of public record (phone books? remember 'em?) I can’t think of anything that needs a driver’s license _number_ with nothing else (SS card, etc.) to back it up, and a picture of my face is on still shots of plenty of security recordings from places that have cameras, so … what’s so special about my driver’s license that I’d need to be so paranoid about letting an office manager hold it as collateral while I tour _their_ property? ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2012, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surrender-your-drivers-license-to-tour-apartment-complex-is-this-common/606633/93 "2012-10-04T18:49:35Z")
Is it legal? ---
**Author:** ![GreenElf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9de053/32.png) [@GreenElf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenElf)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2012, 6:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surrender-your-drivers-license-to-tour-apartment-complex-is-this-common/606633/94 "2012-10-06T06:50:33Z")
The only places that requested to hold my driver’s license were an apartment in downtown Vegas and the Rajneesh, Oregon tour guide. ---
**Author:** ![ptosis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ecccb3/32.png) [@ptosis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ptosis)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2015, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surrender-your-drivers-license-to-tour-apartment-complex-is-this-common/606633/95 "2015-11-26T15:08:12Z")
> [@pullin](#): > > … wanted possession of it, … Monday Nov 23 2015, went to Highland Woods Apartment Homes Apartment Building located at 555 N 7th St, Sierra Vista, AZ 85635 on a studio apartment advertised for $360. She asked me for my photo ID, which I gave her. Then she said let’s go see the apartment. I reminded here that she still had my Arizona Driver’s license to which she replied that that it would remain on her desk while showing me the apartment. I have never been asked to surrender and have my photo ID withheld from me during a routine inspection of a a tenancy unit. She placed my photo ID in plain sight unsecured on top of her desk with an open door policy office. To me that showed an extreme lack of respect of my security of ID. Then she went to her supervisor in the back who came out. First I was told it was ‘policy’ then she lied to lied me and said, ‘that it was AZ state law.’ Not only is it not Arizona state law, I was under the impression that I merely had to show her my photo ID and that it would be given back to me. I did not expect to surrender and have my photo ID withheld from me. Could this be a attempt to swipe all information from DL without my permission while I was looking at the rental unit? Or could it be for some other reason other than the obvious obfuscation that it was “for the safety of the rental agent”? I am wondering if this policy is evenly applied to all potential tenants or just certain ones that look Mexican? :mad::mad: ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2015, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surrender-your-drivers-license-to-tour-apartment-complex-is-this-common/606633/96 "2015-11-26T15:30:09Z")
I would be charitable and say that it is for the safety of the rental agent. We had a saleslady murdered while showing a house in Little Rock a few months ago. But it should be locked away, or better, photocopied and returned to you. ---
**Author:** ![madsircool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madsircool/32/3432_2.png) [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2015, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surrender-your-drivers-license-to-tour-apartment-complex-is-this-common/606633/97 "2015-11-26T15:42:36Z")
A studio for $360? Id let you break my legs for a deal like that. ---
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2015, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surrender-your-drivers-license-to-tour-apartment-complex-is-this-common/606633/98 "2015-11-26T15:45:42Z")
I’ve never seen this either and wouldn’t do it. It’s obviously not for actual security - fake IDs were easy to get back when I was in high school, and are even more trivial now. No one in this thread has listed an actual good reason for this policy. The only reason I can see is to trap you there to force you to listen to some kind of high pressure sales pitch. If I got stuck somewhere where every apartment complex pulled this scam, I would probably just print some some fake licenses to hand to them. ---
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2015, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surrender-your-drivers-license-to-tour-apartment-complex-is-this-common/606633/99 "2015-11-26T15:48:04Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > I would be charitable and say that it is for the safety of the rental agent. We had a saleslady murdered while showing a house in Little Rock a few months ago. I’m not going to quote all of the old comments on this, but HOW is it for the safety of the rental agent? Do you really believe that there are people who are fine with murder but balk at a fake ID? Or if someone isn’t a careful murderer, that holding their license magically holds their rage at the world in check? No one seems to actually come up with how this provides any real safety. ---
**Author:** ![GreenElf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9de053/32.png) [@GreenElf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenElf)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2015, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surrender-your-drivers-license-to-tour-apartment-complex-is-this-common/606633/100 "2015-11-26T16:10:44Z")
Never mind. Posted 3 years ago. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surrender-your-drivers-license-to-tour-apartment-complex-is-this-common/606633.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surrender-your-drivers-license-to-tour-apartment-complex-is-this-common/606633.md?page=6)