Ideas to better filter potential tenants needed!

[Clark Coffey]

Hello all, I'm so grateful I found this forum and I appreciate everyone's advice. You've all been so helpful so far.

It seems no matter how much I reiterate my application criteria in my ads and in my communications with people, I am inundated with people who don't qualify. At every stage of the process they take a considerable amount of my time. Ideally, I want to help people self-filter from ever making it far down the funnel without me having to take a large amount of my time to do so. 

I don't feel that my criteria are outrageous - 650 fico, 2.5x to 3x income to rent (im in SoCal), no violent criminal history, verified rental history w/no major neg feedback from previous landlord.

If any of you out there have some good tips regarding filtering applicants before they waste too much time, please share them - (how much qualification info do you put in your ads, do you reiterate this criteria in all of your communications to them, do you do pre-screening applications prior to seeing the units, etc etc etc). I've got 45 people a week replying to my ad for one unit, with 10 people a week asking for showings, about 5 of them applying, and so far none qualifying!

Thank you for your help!