Reading a Potential Tenant's Credit Report

[Beau Blinder]

Hey everybody,

I have a family applying for one of my units who seem pretty solid. They have good references from their previous landlords, they strike me like responsible people, all three of them (husband, wife, mother-in-law) are employed and have been with their same employers for a while. Their income more than meets my requirements.

The only pause for me here is their credit scores (mid 600s) and the reasons for those scores -- 2/3 of them have at least something in collections. The balances are all reasonable, but given that this is my first time going through this process I just wanted to check with some other landlords. Do collections give you guys pause? Their previous landlords both said they've had no issues with late payments and they've been with their last landlord for 4 years. The wife also has about $50k in student loans (which she's paid promptly).

I've been looking for help reading the credit reports (these are TransUnion reports from Zillow). Do you guys know why someone would have a credit score of "-1"? I can't find anything from TransUnion or anywhere else that would indicate why someone would have a negative credit score. Seems like a bug.

Any feedback here is appreciated.

Beau