Portland, OR landlords, low barrier screening criteria?

[Jeff S.]

Are you using low barrier screening criteria some recommend? Self managers and property managers? Attorney's suggest safest as far as lawsuit goes but can end up with some sketchy people IMO. Having trouble trading out of Portland.

[Kurt Lane]

I manage both single-family and multi-unit throughout the Portland Metro and beyond (Hillsboro, Beaverton, Lake Oswego, Oregon City, etc). Aside from a 20-plex I manage, we're using the low barrier criteria for all of our properties. For property managers it's not really scalable to use a different criteria and I haven't had issues with the quality of applicants or tenants since implementation last March. We're at 100% on-time payments for all new properties leased since May. With the low barrier screening criteria you really have to focus on how you market, position, and message a property to get the type of applicants you want. For us it's all about marketing and pricing properly. In the property management world we're required to accept the regulations as they are and keep our owners and properties in compliance. That being said, most of the new owners I'm working with are people who formerly self-managed and have decided that the amount of specialized knowledge required to navigate Portland's regulatory environment isn't worth the trouble.