The Eviction Record You Can’t See: What Indianapolis Landlords Are Missing in 2026

You approved the applicant because the background report came back clean. No evictions, no judgments, nothing to worry about. Ninety days later the rent stops, and when you finally get into court you learn this was not their first time in front of a judge.

If that has happened to you, the report was not necessarily wrong. It was incomplete, and in Indiana it is more incomplete today than it was two years ago. Here is what changed, what the eviction numbers actually show, and what still works when the paper trail is gone.

Indianapolis Eviction Filings Are Not Surging. They Never Went Away.

You may hear that evictions are spiking. The public data says something different. According to Princeton University’s Eviction Lab, Marion County recorded 18,110 eviction filings in the first nine months of 2026, about 4% fewer than the 18,915 filed during the same months of 2025. That works out to roughly 2,000 filings every month.

Flat is not good news. Indianapolis had 14.2 eviction filings for every 100 renter households in 2025, the sixth highest rate of the 27 cities Eviction Lab tracks. Indiana requires only 10 days’ notice before a landlord can file for nonpayment, so cases move quickly and the volume stays high year after year.

In our own portfolio, the pattern has been tenants who fall behind, get a second chance, and fall behind again. We put about half a dozen tenants on payment plans this year to keep them out of court. Two of those plans failed, and both cases had to be refiled. A payment plan is the right first move for a tenant who hit a rough month. It is not a fix for a tenant who could never afford the home in the first place, and that problem starts at screening.

What Changed: The Record Disappears

On July 1, 2025, a new Indiana law changed how eviction records are handled. Courts are now required to seal an eviction case automatically when it is dismissed, when the judgment goes in the tenant’s favor, or when a judgment against the tenant is overturned on appeal. Tenants who have paid off a money judgment can also ask the court to seal the case. You can read the summary in the Indiana Court Times 2025 legislative update.

Sealed records are not available to landlords or screening companies. Once a case is sealed, it does not exist as far as a background check is concerned.

Here is what that looks like in practice. We have started hearing judges in Indianapolis eviction court tell tenants that if they move out by the court-set date, the case will be dismissed and sealed so they can go find another place to live. The tenant leaves, the landlord gets the unit back, and the filing disappears from public view.

Whatever you think of the policy, the result for the next landlord is the same. An applicant can be filed on, agree to leave, and walk into your showing in 46218 or 46222 a month later with a report that says nothing happened. The filing history that landlords have relied on for years is now a partial picture.

What One Bad Placement Costs an Out-of-State Owner

Take a typical urban core single-family rental in 46201 or 46205 leasing at $1,100 a month. A tenant who falls two months behind before the case is resolved could cost you $2,200 or more in lost rent, plus filing and attorney costs. A refile after a failed payment plan stretches that further.

Then comes the turn. Turn costs on lower-income urban core rentals run $6,000 to $8,000, and an interior repaint alone is approximately $3,000 in Indianapolis in 2026. A bad tenant in eight months can trigger the same turn cost as four years of normal wear. Add it together and one bad placement could approach $10,000 or more before the next tenant moves in.

If you live in another state, you usually find out about the problem late. By the time a missed payment becomes a court date, you have already lost the months you cannot get back. We broke down more of these hidden costs in the real cost of self-managing an Indianapolis rental property in 2026.

What Still Works When the Filing History Doesn’t

Sealed records are hidden from everyone, including us. No screening company and no manual court search can see a case that has been sealed. So the question is not how to find the hidden record. It is how to screen for the thing that caused it.

Most eviction filings start with rent the tenant could not afford. That is the part you can still verify.

Verify income against bank statements, not just paystubs. A paystub is easy to fake. Deposits hitting a bank account month after month are much harder to fake. We check paystubs against bank statements on every applicant, and we covered why in the new paystub problem.

Search court records by hand. Sealing does not hide everything. Judgments that have not been satisfied, small claims money judgments, and filings in other counties can still show up in a manual search when an automated report misses them. We run manual court record searches on every applicant for that reason.

Treat a clean report as one data point. A clean background check used to mean something close to “no history.” Now it means “no history the public can see.” The income has to stand on its own.

This is also why we calculate our sub-2% eviction rate on the tenants we place, not on tenants we inherit when an owner brings us a property that is already occupied. The screening is the part we control, and it is the part that decides whether you end up in court.

The Tool Built for Falsified Applications

When a tenant does get through on fake documents, Indiana law gives landlords a faster option than a standard eviction. Under a 2025 change, a landlord can petition for an emergency possessory order when a tenant provided materially false information to get the lease. The same tool applies when a tenant or a tenant’s guest commits a crime that threatens the health and safety of another tenant, the landlord, or the landlord’s agent.

That only helps if someone actually caught the falsified information and documented it before move-in. A doctored paystub sitting in an application file is evidence. A paystub nobody compared against a bank statement is just paper. The same 2025 legislative session also gave owners new tools against squatters, which we covered in Indiana’s 2025 squatter law.

Why This Hits Out-of-State Owners Hardest

If you own in 46208, 46219, or 46227 and live in California or overseas, you are not in the courtroom hearing what judges tell tenants. You are not watching the docket in Marion County. You see a screening report, an approval, and eventually a missed payment.

The same applies to newer suburban owners in Fishers, Carmel, Noblesville, and Greenfield. A higher rent does not protect you from an applicant whose last case was sealed. The rules apply statewide.

The eviction numbers in Indianapolis have been high for years and they are staying high. What changed is how much of that history you can see before you hand over the keys. Owners who rely on a clean report alone are screening with less information than they think they have. For more on what to expect from a manager when you cannot be here yourself, see our guide for out-of-state landlords in Indianapolis, and for current rent and leasing data, visit our Indiana rental market reports.