Opinions of NTN (for tenant credit report), etc.?

[Bienes Raices]

Are people here still having success with credit screening services like NTN?
I did not do a credit check a year ago with my first rental and got lucky with good tenants, but now after reading some of the stories here I'm going to start doing it.

With NTN (and I assume some other places), you can set certain criteria like "unpaid medical bills up to $1000 ok" and then they will give you a pass/fail on the applicant.

This is appealing to me in the sense that since I don't see the actual credit report I don't have to jump through the FCRA hoops and it makes the decision process black and white regarding the applicant. On the other hand, I don't know if I should really be looking at a finer level of detail on the credit report to make the decision?

This has been discussed here before but the threads I saw are several years old, so I was wondering how this works in today's financial/credit environment.

[Steve Babiak]

I last used NTN prior to the changes that required all those hoops you mention, and at that time was only using their credit and eviction history screenings. Was OK for me.

But they seem pricey nowadays, since there are services that will do the same things for one lump sum. NTN wants each thing to be a separate line item. Think of other services as offering pricing sort of like a fast food "value meal", but NTN only has a menu where you pay for fries and drink as separate items.

Not seeing the actual reports, as you mentoned, is not the way I've done things, so I can't comment on that aspect.