Earlier this month, Minnesota got into step with a number of other states by requiring all vehicles that have been bought back by manufacturers under “lemon laws” to carry the distinction on their titles.

Lemon laws generally require car makers to buy back a vehicle that’s under warranty if it has critical or chronic defects.

Titles issued in Minnesota can already be “branded” if the vehicles have been drowned, salvaged from a total loss or rebuilt after a terrible accident. The titles feature such alarming designations as “FLOOD DAMAGED,” “PRIOR SALVAGE,” “REBUILT,” and “RECONST.”

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It took weeks for my colleague Lora Pabst to obtain and analyze housing records for her story on the hundreds of code violations at apartments owned by Hyder Jaweed and Asgher Ali of North Oaks.

Even though all the records Pabst used were public, the work that went into the story gives some idea of how hard it would be for regular people to find out if landlords have a record of failing to fix leaking pipes, busted windows, rat infestations and the like. Local governments, who are typically in charge of making sure landlords keep their properties habitable, don’t generally put their databases of code violations online. When they do crack down on landlords, it’s rarely an occasion to hold a news conference or send out a press release.

Landlords always run background checks on prospective tenants to see if they have a record of ignoring bills, setting fires or selling illegal products. So why shouldn’t prospective renters be able to background their landlords?

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Sue Bleichner knew something might happen to her new couch. So when she bought it for $488 in July 2006 from Wickes Furniture in Burnsville, she also paid $109 for a Stainsafe warranty. For seven years, should her couch get discolored or wounded, the warranty meant she could get it fixed without additional cost.

Or so she thought. Tucked against a wall in Bleichner’s Lakeville home, the light colored microfiber couch showed no blemishes for year. Then, in August 2007, Bleichner was vacuuming when she noticed a hole in the upholstery, as if someone had jammed a pencil into the couch. How the puncture wound got there, she has no idea to this day. But she had planned for something like this.

On Aug. 16, she got on the phone with Stainsafe, which is based in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. Thus began her long and unhappy journey.

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On Friday, Jim Martin got the piece of paper he has been awaiting since January: the title for his 2003 Toyota Tundra pickup. As I reported earlier this month, Martin bought the truck at Maryland Avenue Auto Sales in St. Paul, but the title never arrived in the mail. When he drove back to the dealership to find out why, Maryland Avenue Auto Sales had disappeared. Nobody he contacted knew what happened to the title, so Martin was stuck with a truck whose ownership he couldn’t legally prove.

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