How to Fill Units with Effective Tenant Screening

If you’re a landlord, you’re probably looking to fill your units with good tenants — ones who won’t cause late payments, pet problems, or noise issues. Finding good tenants is vital for any landlord looking to grow their rental business while keeping their peace of mind. This makes online tenant screening a crucial tool.

Finding quality tenants may seem like a daunting task. But by asking the rightquestions, requesting tenant screening reports, and avoiding fair housing discrimination, you can ensure you’ll attract good tenants and keep bad ones away.

Building a Rental Application

Rental applications are an extremely important aspect of tenant screening that should never be overlooked. The information gained in a rental application can provide insights that would otherwise be inaccessible, and when paired with credit history, identity verification, or criminal records, the rental application can settle whether a tenant is being truthful.

Helpful information to include on a rental application includes current and prior residence information, employment history, personal references, and proof of income. Additionally, information about pets, smoking, or whether the tenant owns a vehicle can be useful depending on your location or personal policies.

Don’t let this invaluable information go to waste. Use it! Call past landlords and employers to ask about the tenant. Take notes and put together a set of questions. A rental application allows you to learn a lot about a renter’s value and character.

Understanding the Importance of Reports

Requesting reports can be a great way to learn more about the past behavior of a potential tenant. Investigating credit, eviction, and criminal reports can provide you with crucial information about a tenant’s income and spending habits, whether they’ve been evicted (or how many times they’ve been evicted), and whether they have a criminal record that could indicate safety issues for your other tenants. Considering all these reports jointly helps you to learn about a tenant’s past conduct and if they meet your minimum requirements for renting one of your units.

Many sources can help you request all three of these reports together, but we recommend searching for the best tenant screening services to meet your specific needs.

How to Avoid Fair Housing Discrimination

When choosing tenants for your units, it’s vital that you follow federal fair housing laws to ensure that every potential tenant is evaluated impartially. The Federal Fair Housing Act became law in 1968, guaranteeing renters’ choice of housing without unlawful discrimination. The seven protected classes under the FHA include race, color, religion, national origin, sex, familial status, and disability, but many states have additional protected classes such as age, marital status, sexual orientation, and more. It’s important to reference state laws in addition to federal FHA to ensure each possible tenant is treated fairly.

As a landlord, it’s important to put effort into asking the right tenant screening questions and not crossing the line into fair housing issues. For instance, it would be inappropriate to ask an applicant what religion they follow. Let’s say you pass over this tenant for someone else — the tenant gets upset, interprets this question as discriminatory, and reports the incident. Even if unintentional, including these questions on an application can get you into legal trouble and cost thousands of dollars in fines, so it’s much safer to keep your questions and expectations clear and consistent.

The best route is to establish minimum applicant requirements, such as a credit score minimum of 600 or no previous evictions. These requirements can be changed later but must be applied equally to every applicant. Letting things slide on a case-by-case basis opens the door for fair housing issues later.

Using Passive Screening

Where active screening techniques like paying for and running reports require time, attention, and detail, passive screening only requires initial setup. This type of screening involves marketing in different areas that will catch the interest of different types of tenants who better fit your criteria.

For example, if you’re looking for student renters, advertising near a campus through yard signs and paper ads may attract them; conversely, if you’re looking for slightly older renters, posting an ad in the paper may provide better results.

Conclusion

Now that you have a comprehensive understanding of the process of tenant screening, you as a landlord can better navigate the complexities of searching for the right tenants for your units. Screening potential residents is the best way to defend yourself, as well as your properties, from a tenant nightmare down the line.

With this information, you can keep your peace of mind knowing your units are in the hands of quality tenants.