What's a good rule of thumb for income requirement for tenants?

[Isaac B.]

I'm renting out my house and I'd like to know what is a reasonable income requirement to have for my tenants. 2x, 3x, 4x the rent?

[Nathan Gesner]

Monthly verifiable income should be about 3x the monthly rent.

DTI = Debt To Income ration. You can verify it by running a credit check and adding up all their monthly payments. If they're paying $200 for student loans, $150 for a car, and $55 for a credit card, that's a total of $405.

If they make $2,000 a month, divide their debt by their gross income (before taxes):

$405 / $2,000 = 20%

Just because someone makes $4,000 a month doesn't mean they have $4,000 available to spend. I've seen applications where the individual is spending 60% of their money to pay off outstanding debts.