Accept tenants or not, income requirements

[Jennifer Guertin]

Hi everyone, I'm trying to fill a 1BD apartment in May and have a couple that would like to rent. I require monthly incomes to be at least three times the monthly rent. Each person has excellent credit and separately they currently rent studios at $1700 total. My rent would be $1250. But their income is sporadic as they are artists. One person said indicates that they make "about $2K" and the other said "$2k-2500" on their application. I've only rented to folks on a fixed income and have no experience with a co-signer and have read in the forum co-signers are not recommended. If their annual income is $48K give or take, do you recommend I request old paychecks to verify and check with old landlords on payment history as part of the reference check or just move on and pursue other prospective tenants? Thanks for sharing your experience and suggestions, Jen