Applicant doesn't want his credit pulled.

[Conner Hitchcock]

I have an applicant that doesn't want to pull his credit (doesn't want to take the hit for a hard credit check). They are offering me a report from Rentspree that THEY ran.  I would still follow up with the employer for the paystubs and do background check on my own.

Should I budge or insist on the current protocol which is me running credit myself?

Thanks all!

Conner Hitchcock

[Galen Ikonomov]

Ups, I am going to Edit my previous post, I thought we are talking about you being a Loan Officer dealing with an applicant haha ( not enough coffee I guess ).

I would not accept anything that the potential tenants provide me with. 

[Caroline Gerardo]

"I will review your information. Before providing a lease or documents to sign my protocol requires that I run my own xyz named report."

Easy to cut and paste his own report, are you an expert at determining if it is real?

[Bill Brandt]

A hard pull affected them for what, 3 months? Are they planning to buy a new home in the next few months? Is their credit so borderline they wouldn’t be able to buy a new car in the next 3 months with 1 hard pull?

Tell them to buy whatever it is they plan to buy in the next 90 days and then come back and you’ll pull their credit. 

[Phillip Austin]

@Conner Hitchcock This is a hard NO. Stick to your underwriting criteria, period. 

This is a sign of a "bad tenant." Someone who gives you a hard time about something as simple as running a credit check will give you all sorts of problems and headaches down the road. 

It's not about the credit check. It's about having a reasonable tenant who adheres to basic landlording practices.

[Eliott Elias]

You should move on to the next applicant. 

[Mary Smith]

@Conner Hitchcock Is the applicant aware that when you run their credit check, this would be a soft pull and not a hard pull for them? By screening your tenant, you are in no way affecting their credit score. I would explain this to them and let them know that it's protocol for you to run your own credit checks on every applicant that applies to your property.

[David Dachtera]

Quote from @Conner Hitchcock:

I have an applicant that doesn't want to pull his credit (doesn't want to take the hit for a hard credit check). They are offering me a report from Rentspree that THEY ran.  I would still follow up with the employer for the paystubs and do background check on my own.

Should I budge or insist on the current protocol which is me running credit myself?

Thanks all!

Conner Hitchcock

Have them sit down at your computer, watch them log into the service, run a new report and print it on your printer.

Hard pulls aren't that big a deal. If they can't take the hit, send them on their way. Their credit is likely too fragile to withstand scrutiny.

My $0.02 ...

[Cody Neumann]

I require it every time no matter what. 

I feel if a tenant doesn't want it pulled then they are trying to hide something. 

Just my take

[Matthew Kwan]

Please kindly clarify is this applicant applying as a borrower OR tenant? If borrower you can do a soft pull which will not ding his/her credit score but you will need to calculate all of their liabilities from scratch which will give an estimate to calculate their DTI.

@Carlos Valencia @Albert Bui

[Jonathan R McLaughlin]

Disagree--the hard pull is potentially a big deal for a tenant who might have multiple people pulling credit, but you don't need to. There are several "soft pull" services for tenants or portals, so you can get an official report that doesn't ding them. Costs $20, so you could deal with their score as preliminary and acceptance (if you want to) after they run it.

that is separate from their attitude as @Phillip Austin talked about--but it is a solvable problem.

[Joel Case]

I love when they make it easy on you! NEXT!!!!!

[Robert Dudley]

Agree that a hard pull will "hurt" the renter in terms of some degradation of credit score.  There are ways for the renter to push their information instead of having it "pulled".  SmartMove is a service that will do a soft pull and not impact the renter's credit score.

[Russell Brazil]

The report they furnish you very well may be fake. They have the choice to apply, or not apply. But if they are applying, everyones credit gets run, period. 

[Ned J.]

Red flag #1...... NOPE... here is my criteria.....meet the criteria or your application is denied. PERIOD.... NEXT....

[Will Fraser]

Do you have other applicants?  

If it's early on the market and a hot property then move on to the next applicant.

If it is slow going then something that has been suggested above should work (like logging running a free bureau report in your presence using one of the many reporting tools available).  

They may actually be acting very prudently here, or they may be a chatchki.  It's really hard to know, so I'd default to the analysis above