Tenant Screening: Negative Attributes to Screen Out

As I said in my last post, it is never too early in the process to figure out what you’re looking for and what you will not accept.

Here are some attributes we screen out:

• Pets or people beyond policy. We have established occupancy for each unit, normally two people per bedroom. We also have sorted out what units are suitable for pets, and have a list of breeds we will not accept. Our insurance doesn’t have restrictions, but I meet each pet to make sure it is an animal I’d be willing to contend with in an emergency situation. We charge more rent per pet, making it more appealing to accept pets.
• Criminal record. We do rent to people without a clean background check, with the thought process that they have such limited housing option that they may stay with us a long time. We give more preference if the activity was 4 years ago or more. We give less preference to someone with multiple incidents or who is on the sex offender registry, and decline if it is a duplex with kids in the other unit. We decline higher level sex offenders and any criminal activity that could destroy our property or terrorize the neighborhood.
• High drama. This is difficult to be objective about, but is not hard to spot. If someone has sued others in the past, is really forceful, contacts us often and/or rambles on, or has a lot of drama on Facebook, they are going to take more of our time and energy to landlord, and move lower on our list. One of our worst tenants looked perfect on paper, but she was fussy from the start, and we knew it before we signed the rental agreement. Never again.
• Credit report issues. I don’t expect renters to have good credit; otherwise they would probably be homeowners. But there are some red flags. If they owe a lot of money other than consumer debt or medical bills, the debt could easily relate to owing a prior landlord or utility company funds, and that trend will likely continue into this tenancy. If they have more than $2K in debt, that is problematic in our low income arena. And anything not disclosed, either credit, criminal, or address-wise, is grounds for denial.

Applicants are often looking for independent landlords, thinking they will be more lenient. Renting to people with criminal activity, or as first time renters, or without a SSN have been good niches for us, but we’ve learned what to look for and to decline if too many things are stacked against them. Think through where that tipping point is for you.

What we share with applicants about the negative attributes we’re not looking for:

We do not deny housing for race, color, religion, sex, national origin, handicap, sexual orientation, marital status, or familial status.

We do deny housing to individuals:

• convicted of manufacturing or selling drugs
• convicted of a crime the poses a threat to the property or neighborhood, including repeated disturbances, gambling, prostitution, violence, threats of violence, or rape
• where there is poor prior tenancy: evictions, violations, damage to rental property, poorly handled move outs, amounts are still owing to landlords or utilities.
• who misrepresent information on the rental application