All Forum Posts by: Clark Coffey

Hello all, yet another screening question. Thank you in advance for your advice. 

I don't do this often, I've got one unit, and I've only rented it for 6 years, so I've only had to go through a screening process a few times.

I am wondering how much you all look at debt, especially consumer debt (credit cards, persona unsecured loans), car loan debt, student loans, etc. I''m wondering if I'm applying my own very conservative financial ideals (I don't carry any consumer debt, pay cash for cars) on my applicants or if I have a valid concern regarding ability or willingness to pay rent down the road. 

Most of my applicants carry an what seems to me a mind-blowing amount of debt - examples - 6 plus credit cards with balances (some right up against the maximum) with minimum monthly repayment adding up to a substantial amount of their income , car loans for cars that cost more than a full year of their income... one recent applicant that has already accumulated $7,000 of consumer debt only 1.5 years after a bankruptcy. 

So, my question is: how do you all weight the risk that debt might represent on an application, especially when their fico is actually decent (650 and up).

Thank you

Wow. You don’t do credit or background checks.... yikes. I would never rent to someone I didn’t  throughly vet. But hey, if it’s working for you. 

I personally do not believe that people (any of us) are good judges of when someone is lying. The science shows we aren’t. We are given to trusting, even when we shouldn’t. I take myself out of the equation and let the numbers and facts do the deciding. 

I just met the nicest young couple. They seemed like a great fit. Credit check came back 700s for both. They had pay stubs, great. Called the contact they gave me for employment verification, checked out. I have a system where i always back that up with a number for their employer i find on my own. I called the number of the employer I found online, asked for the HR department and discovered they had fabricated the pay stubs. The applicant wasn’t employed there. Had I trusted them and not verified... well, I can only imagine with it impossible to evict today in California.

Regarding criminal history: I don’t mention it, but it is absolutely not illegal to decline someone because of a violent crime. In California it would be illegal to decline someone out of hand just because they had a criminal history, but not if the crimes are violent.

Thank you all! I'll incorporate more of these as I refine my process.

Hello all, I'm so grateful I found this forum and I appreciate everyone's advice. You've all been so helpful so far.

It seems no matter how much I reiterate my application criteria in my ads and in my communications with people, I am inundated with people who don't qualify. At every stage of the process they take a considerable amount of my time. Ideally, I want to help people self-filter from ever making it far down the funnel without me having to take a large amount of my time to do so. 

I don't feel that my criteria are outrageous - 650 fico, 2.5x to 3x income to rent (im in SoCal), no violent criminal history, verified rental history w/no major neg feedback from previous landlord.

If any of you out there have some good tips regarding filtering applicants before they waste too much time, please share them - (how much qualification info do you put in your ads, do you reiterate this criteria in all of your communications to them, do you do pre-screening applications prior to seeing the units, etc etc etc). I've got 45 people a week replying to my ad for one unit, with 10 people a week asking for showings, about 5 of them applying, and so far none qualifying!

Thank you for your help!

Wow. Not sure if it’s COVID or my area (unit is in Colton, CA), but it seems like I’m running through applications much more than in the past. It almost feels like people are trying to get into a place thinking that they’ll have a lot more protection from getting booted than normal. People seem to feel entitled to lower criteria because of COVID. I even caught an applicant forging their pay stubs. That’s a first for me. 

Anyone else seeing trends like this?  

Thank you for your reply. I’m not sure it it’s COVID in our area or what - but so far, the applicants we have had have been much less qualified than before. I even caught one with falsified pay stubs! I’m being extra careful. 

Thank you for this reply. They definitely represent a risk that is too high for me. We only have this one unit, we still pay mortgage on it, and I am very risk adverse/fiscally conservative. I just want to ensure my stated criteria for denial (one of the two applicants did not meet the min credit score) won’t get me in trouble!

Hello all, first time poster and relatively inexperienced single unit landlord. I’m out here in California and I want to make sure everything I do on my screening process is 100% above board in every way. I’m so concerned about it, that I may have started overthinking it and I could use a sanity check.

I always apply the same screening criteria to all applicants. I take them in first come first serve order and I accept the first qualified applicant. I do not take more that one applicant at a time and I do not pick the best from the pool of applicants.

Sanity check question: it is totally appropriate and acceptable to require all adults who will be living in the unit to go through the approval process and it is an acceptable criteria to have a credit score minimum for all adults applying, correct? I currently have a married couple applying, one has a fico of 724, the other 568. I require all applicants to have a minimum of 650. There are other issues with this application (high debt to income ratio and criminal record (non-violent drug related - which apparently cannot be grounds for denial in CA).