What do you require as a landlord when screening new tenants?????

[Lorraine Martin]

Hey Landlords!

What are your main requirements when seeking new tenants? 

Credit Score of?

Background check for anyone over 18?

Do you allow negative trade-lines at all ? 

How many references? 

Income three times rent? 

Thanks! 

[Delina Ortiz]

Hey Lorraine,

Since I work in California where tenants have more rights than owners, we go through a tedious process that ensures the safety of us, the managers, and the owners themselves. Here are all of the steps we take to ensure that we get proper tenants who won't land us in an evictions court:

1. We use Transunion which provides / runs the credit, criminal, and background report for each and every applicant over the age of 18. Once that is received, our operational manager manually checks each report (as to avoid conflict of interest) and looks for indicators of pay day loans, collections, high debt to income, and basically anything else that would suggest future default on a rental payment. Then the criminal and eviction report is checked and the only way we would let a criminal report slide is if there was like a speeding ticket of something miniscule. Even then, we STILL call and question it. We are non-negotiable on evictions and deny all who have one. 

2. After the tenant is conditionally approved through the screening, we do landlord, income, and employment verification. This means that the operational manager calls ever single reference provided and asks questions like, "would you rent to them again", "are they good stewards of the home", "have they ever defaulted on a rent payment", For employment, we would pretty much ask the same things. 

3. Once that is done, we ask for w-2's, 3 months worth of paystubs, or if they are business owners, 1099's / income tax returns. This is to ensure that their income is at least 2.5 times the rent. We also look for signs of forgery and have an expert who scans each document thoroughly.

4. After all of that, we have an approved applicant!!!

Let me know if this help :) Ask all the questions you need answered. I am here to help!

Kindly,

Delina Ortiz