You had a criminal case that was dismissed, but it prevented you from getting an apartment. Here's why you shouldn't be surprised and what to do next. Just because you get the record expunged, doesn't mean it's gone from everywhere. If you've had your record expunged, you're going to get an expungement order in the mail. Hopefully, you've been told to keep that document forever because you won't get another one of those. And you're going to need a copy of that in 5 years when you go search for an apartment and they run your record and that record pops up because there are companies that are bound by the official record and there are some companies that don't pay for the updates. And if they don't pay for the updates, they don't see that your record was expunged and they're reporting old information. So, you want that record of expungement to prove that your record actually was expunged. They'll take it off real quick.