Screening Tenants- Verification Recommendations for previous landlord and employment

[Rachel Jones]

Hello all! I am new to the game with only one previous tenant under my belt. Looking for recommendations on verifying tenants employment and current/previous landlords. I currently have my property listed on Zillow and have had a ton of scam applications. I look up as much information as I can through search engines but in todays world, a lot of people have more unique jobs and I do not want to call only the numbers the applicant has provided. Just looking to avoid trouble down the road! Any and all help is appreciated!

[Larry Tracy]

Tenant screening is a challenging, but critical piece to being a successful landlord / investor. It is a process, the first piece is to charge an application fee.  That will discourage a large amount of bad applicants. You want to have an income qualification such 2 - 4 times the gross rent to qualify for the unit. Being new I would say no prior evictions will be accepted. Complete a rental verification, but it should not be from any family member or an individual, request there last apartment, or property management company as a rental verification. They should have an employment requirement 1-3 yrs on their job. Get proof of all income. Pull credit, judgment, and criminal reports. Look at social media and mycase.com     There are many steps to a quality and effective screening process. 

I enjoy providing property management and real estate information

[Adam Bartomeo]

We Google the business and verify that the number they gave us is accurate and if it isn't we call the listed number. 

[Drew Sygit]

@Rachel Jones copy & paste from our site:

A bad tenant can lead to thousands of dollars of losses via unpaid rents, legal fees and property damages. We’re one of the few property managers that require W-2’s and a bank statement and we go way beyond the traditional, “income must = 3x rent” qualifier.

Below is more information about what our Applications Department does to screen applicants and find the best tenants
possible for your property.

1. 1. Required Info
      We require the following from each applicant over the age of 18, that is not a dependent of another
      applicant (as evidenced on a tax return):
      • Copy of acceptable state picture ID
      • Recent YTD paystub
      • Recent W-2
      • Recent Bank Statement, all pages, no info blacked out
      • Recent tax return if self-employed
   2. Credit History
      Many companies use credit summaries, but we find these rarely tell the whole credit story. So, we obtain a full credit report and review collections, chargeoffs, age of credit accounts, active accounts, etc. to build an overall credit evaluation.

FICO Score	Pct of Population	Default Probability
800 or more	13.00%	1.00%
750-799	27.00%	1.00%
700-749	18.00%	4.40%
650-699	15.00%	8.90%
600-649	12.00%	15.80%
550-599	8.00%	22.50%
500-549	5.00%	28.40%
Less than 499	2.00%	41.00%

Source: Fair Isaac Company

1. Public Records
   We also obtain data from national databases about evictions, convictions and sex-offender histories. These all require applicants to submit an acceptable Letter of Explanation addressing each specific issue and occurrence.
2. Rental History
   Because a current landlord may say anything to get rid of a bad tenant out of desperation, we also require information for the previous landlord of all applicants. Verifying rental history often takes a long time to complete due to applicants not giving us correct landlord contact information, landlords not returning our calls or refusing to give us any details.We also deal with applicants trying to have family or friends pose as their landlords. To address this, we verify the property owner per government records and use this information to vet imposters.Anything that seems suspicious will lead to us requesting an acceptable Letter of Explanation to address.
3. Analyze Income
   Many landlords require a month of paystubs from applicants and just use these to calculate a monthly qualifying income. In our opinion, this doesn’t result in a viable income amount or analyze income stability. We use a YTD paystub and last year’s W-2(s) to calculate income several different ways:
   • Hourly or salary income calculated to a monthly amount
   • YTD income divided by number of YTD months
   • YTD + W-2(s) income divided by the corresponding number of months

   If these numbers vary too much, then we investigate and require an acceptable Letter of Explanation.

4. Employment Stability
   Unless an applicant has exceptional credit, we strive to determine their stability of employment to make sure they’ll always be able to pay the rent on time. So, we require a detailed employment history for the last two years and verify as much of it as reasonably possible.
5. Assets
   We are one of the few management companies that requires a bank statement as part of our application process. We think it’s important as it allows us to check for Non-Sufficient Funds (NSF) issues and to determine if an applicant is living paycheck-to-paycheck. Bouncing payments or only being an illness or accident away from not being able to pay the rent, are issues considered by our underwriting.
6. Letter Of Explanation
   Any time there are credit issues or we discover an inconsistency, we require a written letter of explanation (LOX). Many applicants just want to tell us their excuses over the phone, but if they won’t take the time to put it in writing, we find they rarely end up being good tenants.
7. Underwriting
   Traditionally, landlords have only looked at the income of applicants and approved those having income equal to three times the property rent. This crude method ignores all the other debt payments tenants have. Given that many tenants will make their car payment before their rent payment, we've copied the mortgage industry's method of debt-to-income (DTI) ratios. We calculate rent plus all debt payments as a percentage of gross monthly income.
   Our underwriters strive to analyze and balance all the information above to determine the statistical likelihood of a tenant paying their rent on time.
8. Approval
   Once an applicant is approved, we require a nonrefundable Holding Fee to make sure they are serious and don’t change their minds. We actually keep marketing a property and accepting back up applicants until a property is actually occupied.

[John Williams]

Quote from @Rachel Jones:

Hello all! I am new to the game with only one previous tenant under my belt. Looking for recommendations on verifying tenants employment and current/previous landlords. I currently have my property listed on Zillow and have had a ton of scam applications. I look up as much information as I can through search engines but in todays world, a lot of people have more unique jobs and I do not want to call only the numbers the applicant has provided. Just looking to avoid trouble down the road! Any and all help is appreciated!

 Get paystubs and verify authenticity of them. Ensure the address on the paystub matches the address on their ID and credit report. You can look up the company and see if they actually exist and call them directly. You could also cross reference paystub income with income on their bank statements. 

[Cliff H.]

@Rachel Jones welcome to the wild world of landlording Rachel! My advice would be establishing a system intended built for volume. That’s more than simply posting an ad on Zillow, but having a sales funnel that will allow you to filter out that junk spam and ask people the clarifying questions that will implicitly confirm they are human beings with a heartbeat and income to pay for your rental.

Capture the most accurate photos and video walk-through of the space as you possibly can. If that’s not an option you’re comfortable with, pay the couple hundred dollars to have a professional photographer/videographer grab the walk-through so you have it as a permanent going forward. Allowing people to “know the space” before they come out will save you an enormous amount of time by prescreening people who have no interest in that rental’s layout.

Have a system that does not involve you meeting people for a showing. 50% of people will either be window shoppers or know immediately upon entering the door that the space does not work for them. You don’t want to waste your time with these folks or plan 1:1 people thinking they’re “the one.” You need at least 10-20 people walking through a space to find the one that both wants that space and set your written qualifications.

That brings me to the most important piece, I have formal written qualifications well before you ever advertise the space. This will save you enormous amounts of time and legal liability down the road.

Hope this helps!

[Nathan Gesner]

Fake paystubs, tax returns, and other "proof" documents are an increasing issue.

I don't use the contact information provided by the applicant because they could be sending me to a friend or relative. Look the employer up online, then call the public number.