How to verify an Ann Arbor landlord before you pay anyone

Every renter in Ann Arbor knows the usual scam advice: don’t wire money, insist on a video tour, check whether the poster’s profile looks real. All good. But there’s one check that’s stronger than any of them and almost nobody uses it, because it’s hiding in city government instead of a housing group.

Ann Arbor law requires every rental unit to hold a valid Certificate of Compliance from the city. The municipal code is blunt about it: “No person shall lease or otherwise make a dwelling or rooming unit available for occupancy if a Certificate of Compliance is not in effect for the unit” (Section 8:516). The certificate means the city has actually inspected the place and licensed it to be rented. It’s not optional, and the records are public.

So a legitimate Ann Arbor rental has a paper trail with the city. A fake listing — an address the “landlord” doesn’t control, or a unit that isn’t a licensed rental at all — usually doesn’t. That gap is a scam detector the scammers don’t expect you to use.

The city tracks rental registrations and Certificates of Compliance in an online permit system called STREAM, at stream.a2gov.org, for records from mid-2022 on. Older records live in the city’s A2Trak permit archive. Search by the property address and look for a rental registration and a Certificate of Compliance that hasn’t expired — certificates run about 2.5 years from the last inspection (3.5 if the property passed on the first try).

Be honest with yourself about what this check does. A valid certificate proves the place is real: the address is a licensed, city-inspected rental that legally exists. If an address has no rental registration at all, that’s a serious red flag — either it’s not a legal rental or the person listing it is making things up.

What the certificate does not prove is that the person messaging you is actually connected to that unit. A scammer can copy a real, registered address off Zillow and pretend to rent it. So the permit check is necessary but not sufficient: it confirms the place, not the person. You still have to confirm you’re dealing with the real leaseholder — which is the other half of the problem.

That’s the whole reason Wroomly is built the way it is. The certificate lookup confirms the place is legitimate; Wroomly’s @umich.edu verification confirms the person on the other end is a real, named University of Michigan student, not an anonymous account. Together they close both halves of the scam — real place, real person.

Sublets have a wrinkle: the person renting to you usually isn’t the landlord, so they won’t appear on the Certificate of Compliance — the original tenant does, through their lease. That’s expected and fine. The certificate still does its job: it confirms the building and unit are a legal, inspected rental rather than an invented address.

For the person side of a sublet, your checks are the ones in the subletting guides: the original tenant’s written landlord approval to sublet (most Ann Arbor leases require it), a written sublease agreement, and — on Wroomly — the @umich.edu verification that says the student handing you the keys is who they claim to be. Certificate for the place, consent-plus-verification for the person.

While you’re learning what Ann Arbor law gives you, two more are worth knowing, because they push back on the parts of the market students complain about most.

Right to Renew / the Early Leasing Ordinance: Ann Arbor limits how early a landlord can pressure you about next year. Under the current ordinance, landlords generally can’t make you decide on a renewal or show your occupied unit until well into your lease, and you keep a right to renew until roughly 150 days before the term ends. It exists specifically to blunt the notorious October leasing rush — so you don’t have to sign for next year in week three.

Free legal help: University of Michigan Student Legal Services will review a lease or sublease for enrolled students at no cost, and Legal Services of South Central Michigan and the Fair Housing Center are there if something goes wrong. Using them is normal, not dramatic — a ten-minute lease review beats a lost deposit.