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credit score for non payment of rent?

I am a landlord and have been wayy to easy on specific tenants. They have been in this house for 3 months and always been at least 10 days late on rent. I have never imposed any penalties and have been very understanding (perhaps too easy). They bounced the last check and now are refusing to pay this months rent, already 11 days overdue. I have left messages the last 4 days for them and no return call. I am going through the legal process to get them evicted and maybe small claims for rent due. I want to know that if they really want to be jerks that I can effect their credit score. How can a landlord, provide a legally accurate reporting of late and nonpayment of rent to the credit bureaus?

Contact your local credit bureau and sign up with them. You do not have to have a court order to do this–if you are a business and someone owes you, you can go straight to them. This will give them the right to pursue the money owed you. They will write them or call them or do what they have to (under the law) in order to get your money since they will be keeping half of it…if the tenants do not pay within 30 days, the credit bureau will post this on the tenants credit report. However, you need to accept that you will never see a dime of this money…court order or not, credit bureau or not, very rarely does the money ever get received. I have gone both routes and wasted a lot of time and money pursuing this and I still didn’t get any money–these “people” do their darndest to stay one step ahead of you so that they never have to pay and the laws are set up so that the person who owes has more rights…basically, small claims court and the credit bureau are there to give you temporary peace of mind, but not closure… next time, do thorough background checks on tenants and have tenants sign a binding contract that they will pay late fees if their rent is late and don’t be afraid to charge a deposit and last month’s rent–that’s about all the recourse you have–accept it or find another line of work…we just sold out, it wasn’t worth it–we lost more than we made, even with background checks and deposits and last months rent and credit bureaus and the court system…