Screening Question - Requiring all applicants to meet min FICO

[Clark Coffey]

Hello all, first time poster and relatively inexperienced single unit landlord. I’m out here in California and I want to make sure everything I do on my screening process is 100% above board in every way. I’m so concerned about it, that I may have started overthinking it and I could use a sanity check.

I always apply the same screening criteria to all applicants. I take them in first come first serve order and I accept the first qualified applicant. I do not take more that one applicant at a time and I do not pick the best from the pool of applicants.

Sanity check question: it is totally appropriate and acceptable to require all adults who will be living in the unit to go through the approval process and it is an acceptable criteria to have a credit score minimum for all adults applying, correct? I currently have a married couple applying, one has a fico of 724, the other 568. I require all applicants to have a minimum of 650. There are other issues with this application (high debt to income ratio and criminal record (non-violent drug related - which apparently cannot be grounds for denial in CA).

[Bjorn Ahlblad]

@Clark Coffey welcome to BP! You are already an experienced LL and more importantly you want to screen well, thoroughly and within Fair Housing. One additional criteria I am applying while the deck is so completely stacked in the tenant's favor is: to what extent does the applicant understand that actions have consequences, and there are lots of indicators for and against. Your applicant(s) fail this test; so especially in Ca I would pass and keep looking. Your credit score minimum is perfectly correct and appropriate to apply.