Negative information includes bad payment history or court records
(judgements, defaults & notices).
This historic information should be used to assess the prospective
tenant's future payment behaviour.
Ultimately it is up to the landlord to decide whether to take on a
tenant or not - different landlords may have different appetites for risk,
meaning that one landlord may take on a tenant that another would decline, and
vice versa.
Where there is a negative history from a four or five years ago, the
agent or landlord can consider that as less risky than an applicant with a
consistent history of negative payment or where there is a recent negative
record - where the concern is that the applicant may have gotten him/herself
into financial trouble and more negative information could soon follow.
The other points to consider when interpreting negative data is the
date of the information, how many negative records vs positive records there
are, and the Rand amount of the negative information.