All Forum Posts by: Account Closed

None of the information necessary to reject this application came from the background check. Even if the employer verification had been ok you still didn't have all the information you needed because you didn't have the boyfriends app.

There was no need to run the background check and no need to waste the tenants money  because neither you nor she benefited from it.

 We  never ever have 12 applicants for a rental property because we don't do not conduct our application application process like a  beauty paegeant.

We process one application at a time and we accept that application if it qualifies and only if it doesn't will we invite further applications.  I'm not the only person in this thread who operates that way so it shouldn't lead you to speculate as to whether I actually run a business.

We do our own background checks so we don't pay for those. The only thing that we would have to pay for is the credit check but since we defer that to that last and we have always made a decision by the time we get to that stage we don't run the credit checks (I have documented extensively in other threads why they are not helpful to us).

In a nutshell, by

a) rigorous early weeding of applicants.

b) only paying for credit check and deferring that till last

c) always knowing whether an application will be successful before the credit check stage

d) doing our own background checks.

we are able to  refund unsuccessful applicants.

For the avoidance of doubt if we haven't decided we can accept an application by the time it gets to the final stage (credit check) we reject it.

@Ayodeji Kuponiyi @James Wise et al

You have a choice as a landlord as to how you conduct your affairs. We specifically set out to discourage hopeless applications at the earliest and every subsequent stage.

Stage 1 is when you first show interest on the phone. Yes we talk and don't just text because if you aren't going to qualify we'd rather not spend the time and money showing you the house. 

Brief digression here. Yes we sometimes pay someone to show our houses, I'm usually out of state and my wife is usually at work. We see that also as a cost of doing business.

Stage 2 is when you come to see the house and that's another opportunity to persuade a non-qualified applicant not to apply so we try and do all our own showings.

Stage 3 or 2b if you like is when we go over the application form with you before you complete it and we emphasise all the things you are going to have to produce to support your application and all the things we are going to check.

Here is the result of that process.

Last month we had an applicant who told us she had never rented as a tenant before but was found to be a co-plaintiff on a lead paint landlord-tenant suit.  This was the first completed application that we had ever had to decline. We returned her application fee, as we were not out of pocket for processing it. So it can be done.

I don't subscribe to the "you lied therefore you don't get your application fee back" school of thought. To those who do let he who has never applied for a job for which he didn't meet all the stated prerequisite qualifications, he who has never told an untruth on a resume and he who has never lied at an interview to get a job cast the first stone.

But it isn't $40.

It's $40 times however many applications need to be submitted in order to get a house, some of which they will be rejected for even though they qualify because landlords have taken non-refundable fees and are running the process as a beauty paegeant.

 I am not your honey. If you can't absorb $40 you ain't much of a businessman.

@James Wise

I don't agree with the idea of running a business  in a way that punishes people who apply for what I am offering. That and a bunch of other things I guess are why we have a waiting list of applicants - referrals from existing tenants calling us up asking if we have a property we can rent to them - not even caring what side of town it is.

If you have a process that explains your criteria it's not hard to turn that into stage 1 of the screening phase whereby people unlikely to qualify are identified and dissuaded from applying. 

If despite explaining your criteria you keep processing unqualified applicants then (just like if you are an employer and keep getting unsuitable resumes) something you are doing isn't working and I believe one can do better than shrugging because you've charged  a non-refundable fee. 

@James DeRoest

If you can't absorb the time or the $40 to process  an application then you ain't got much of a business and a charity would be letting the house rent-free.

On that note why don't we charge job applicants the cost of setting up and running their interview - after all it's the cost of running a job and most employers aren't charities either.

Aside from that the last thing I need is some disgruntled applicant lobbing a brick through a  window in my property because they've had their money kept and been jerked off by some anodyne rejection letter.

@James Wise That's  a cost of doing business as a landlord.

Non-refundable application fees encourage two deplorable habits. Using it as an income earner which is just exploitative and deplorable and using it to run your application process like a beauty paegeant. Non-refundable means even if you didn't spend the time or money on the application you keep it.

@Jason C. Exactly. 

I've done it before as a tenant and got a 10% discount from the landlord (apartment complex).

 It's bad enough they didn't get the house.  Shelter is a basic human need and they didn't hurt you by applying. So instead of coming here to ask how you should phrase your rejection letter designed to keep their money why not just return it.

You wouldn't like it if it were done to you and you wouldn't like it if it were done to your child.