Landlords Get Useful Tenant Screening Tool for Massachusetts District Court Records
In a much anticipated announcement, expanded online court docket information is now available for all district courts in Massachusetts including records on evictions, small claims, civil, and supplementary process (collection actions) cases. The website is Masscourts.org. It is free to use.
Using this site, landlords can check to see if prospective tenants have been involved in any prior evictions or have been sued by creditors. Housing Court dockets have already been available for about a year.
The only downside to the site is that users must search each individual court separately. My advice for landlords is to match the court with the prospective tenant’s former address and check to see if they were previously involved in any summary process or debt collection lawsuits.
