Basic Tenant Qualfications

[Mariah Klemp]

What are your baseline qualifications for a tenant? Do you find pre screening tenants with a few standard questions turns people away?

If a tenant has NO credit - would you consider them?

[Richard F.]

Aloha,

NO Credit is far better than Bad Credit...depending on the reason. Younger applicants, or people new, or relatively new, to the country are pretty common. You can generally get an idea if they are new to the country by when their SS# was issued. Not all reports provide that info, but Equifax does include it on certain reports.

Credit Scores are somewhat over-rated. I have seen perfect Tenants with very low scores, and terrible slow payers with high scores. What matters is what are the underlying data that generates that score? You look at their trade accounts...how old, what is payment history, owed vs available amounts, "pays as agreed", how many? I don't care about outstanding medical bills, old foreclosures, and even older car repos. I DO care about multiple cell phone companies and other consumer utils and revolving store cards that show Bad Habits...individually AND collectively as a bigger picture. I look to see if they are playing a shell game with their bill paying situation...maxing out a couple cards, then paying them down with others that then get maxed. Habits are what you need to look for, both Good and Bad.

Lots of Jobs over a short time period? Similarly frequent residence addresses? What about Court Records...lots of traffic violations (no insurance, no license, expired tags)...misdemeanor or criminal? Accidents? Criminal convictions, TRO's? These are not people you want to rent to typically. Let the hobbyists and sympathetic types take on the "project" (as in needing their life fixed by someone) applicants.

Regarding Credit scores, here is a little insight as to what they actually mean for you: