Possible to Over Screen Tenants?

A long week behind me, costs incurred this week to combat mice and more plumbing issues, another long week before me, but at least a weekend here to recharge!

Saw this article in early November, wanted to circle back to it: https://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/2015/11/04/too-strict-screening-tenants/ I was intrigued when Drew stated that it’s possible to be too strict when it comes to tenant screening.

The article also warns about looking for minimum credit scores or failing to look at the type of debt that is driving the scores. I agree with this. Our suitability report doesn’t provide an actual credit score, just a suitability rating, so we do not use credit scores. Nor would we want to. We also do look at the type of debt. Student debt and medical debt doesn’t concern us. An unpaid utilities bill or collections that look like they could be a landlord claim are very concerning.

One argument is that the suitability reports we purchase often have errors. I certainly have compassion for someone who is having a hard time finding housing due to errors on their credit report or the suitability report, but I don’t lay awake at night worrying about this and I think they have the ability to check and contest their data.

There was also an argument that the computer algorithms don’t make good judgment calls on gray area findings. I would counter that people don’t make good judgment calls based on how they feel about an applicant. We’ve found a middle ground, where the computer data and the soft items all get scored on our personalized scoring sheet and the highest score gets offered the unit.