Tenant screening question

[Aidan Mulligan]

Hello everyone,

I have a quick question that I would like to get peoples advice on.

In a hypothetical I'm renting a two bedroom home for $3,000/Month. Would I screen each tenant as if they were paying $1,500 or $3,000.

I've read that someone should make three times their rent in a month. So which rent amount should I use?

[Nathan Gesner]

There are different ways to approach this. If it's two people (friends, married, dating, whatever) then I combine their income to verify they make 3x the rent. On a $1,000 rental, one person could make $500 and the other could make $2,500 and that would meet my requirement.

For three or more unrelated renters, I require each individual to make a minimum of 2x the rent. Why? Because grouping of 3+ renters almost never works out. One of them will eventually want to move out and I need to ensure the remaining two tenants can cover the rent.