The Work Number

[James H.]

Has anyone had good/bad experiences using "The Work Number" for employee verification? We usually ask for pay stubs and do not formally verify employment. But, we have a perspective tenant whose income we would like to verify (due to apparent identify theft issues, etc.) Her company uses The Work Number for verification. Every time we call, we get a different story about what they require to verify that WE are a legitimate landlord. Some of their requirements are not possible to meet. For example, they asked for a copy of connection paperwork for a landline registered in the name of our LLC. We do not have such a thing since we use our cell phones for personal and landlord purposes.

The last time we spoke to them, on Thursday evening, they told us that they would waive that requirement and would set up an account for us within 48 hours.  Nothing yet...

I cannot imagine having to put every tenant off for 5+ days to get employment verification.  How does everyone else handle this?  

Jim

[Chris Mason]

Originally posted by @James H.:

(1) Chris, are you saying that you call the HR department at corporate headquarters and hope for the best?

(2) My big question on this applicant is tax withholding.  It appears to me that the taxes withheld are significantly less than they should be.  Single person, no dependents, $50K/yr income.  But, federal tax withheld is only $120 or so bi-weekly.  

 (1) Nah, you ask the person who they talk to when payroll things need to be fixed or adjusted. Name/phone/email. By this point the automated system (The Work Number and whatever the company uses internally) has already failed, so I require them to give me a specific name/phone/email of an actual human person that can confirm their employment and look up their last 2 years as well as YTD compensation and complete the relevant Fannie Mae written verification of employment form. Between that, the 4506-T, and paystubs, you know what they make.

(2) You should be looking at gross, not net, for the same reason lenders do... Person A having a $300/month health insurance policy, and Person B having a $100/month health insurance policy along with a $200/month vodka addiction, does not mean that A is worse than B. A is actually way better. But if you looked at their paystubs and got in the weeds about the deductions (which are not your business, really), you would think that B has more capacity for housing expense than A, which is completely false. You also, presumably, are not a CPA. So you do not know what his write-offs are, how they work, or why it may very well be the case that his withholding is exactly correct. You also will not have any way to know if this person just takes their Christmas bonus, sets it aside, and pays taxes with it.

Basically, looking at net and worrying about CPA stuff is waaaaaaaay too in the weeds and micro-managerial of their lives.