Help with Tenant Screening

[Matt Carvalho]

Hi Everyone!

First time Landlord here. I need some advice into my tenant screening process. My fiance and I are currently offering a rental property in London, Ontario for $2000 plus utilities, haven't had the best of luck finding the right tenant. We received an application from a prospective tenant that upon viewing felt promising but is starting to go south. Originally she stated she would get our application back to us the following day along with her own police report and her credit score from Credit Karma (even though we told her we do that through our screening app Naborly) and banking statements. 

4 days later we've received the application back, no police report as she still decided to get one on her own (doesn't sit well), wants to send a screenshot of the credit score and no banking statements. I told her the screenshot of the credit score is fine for now as we were still planning to send her our screener to verify the information on the application.... now I'm not so sure.

She's a single mom with 3 kids, I have no problem with that. However her monthly pay from her current employer is less than $800 and she is basically living off of government support. She get's the majority of her income from Child Tax Credits and other forms of support. Upon doing a simple Facebook search of her friends and contacts, I've found a lot of coincidences in her landlords and references. One of her emergency contacts is a friend who also happens to be the mother of a "landlord"  she previously rented from. Another previous landlord is a family member. A lot of the phone numbers given for previous landlords are from Huntsville where she is originally from. When asked if her current employer was a home-based business she didn't know how to "answer it honestly". After doing a Google search on the property I found our the property was for sale in 2017 but was taken off the market, she says she's been working there since 2016. It also doesn't look like it's a business of any kind, no signs or advertisement (it's a tanning business).

To me there are a lot of red flags going up without even doing a proper screening. I have a few questions, do you allow applicants to provide their own credit scores and background checks? Am I reading too much into some of the information I've found or should I still with my gut? If so, what's a good strategy to tell her she doesn't qualify for the property? Regardless of what she had sent us we were still going to send her our screener although now I'm not sure that it's worth it. I know you can't discriminate against anyone on government assistance, I just don't have a good feeling about this applicant and was curious if anyone has dealt with a similar situation. Any help in this matter would be greatly appreciated. I thank you for your time in advance.

Have A Great Day,

Matt & Lauren