Aloha,
Call me Old School, but I process all apps personally and in the order received, either denying and moving on to the next app, or approving and placing any others on hold until I have collected deposit via money order within two business days. I may, in some cases, hold those apps as backups until the rental agreement is signed and first month rent paid, before advising the prospect it is game over. IF a prospect is competent and has all of the necessary support docs, it only takes, on average, 15 -20 minutes to put the puzzle together and make a decision. I have processed over 3000 applications at this point in my career, and over the last 20 years, have had to file eviction on tenants
that I placed only twice. Over the past 10 years, my client's vacant units have been offered from a low of $1000 to a high of about $3000, with a few outliers.
There are too many variables, some of which matter, some of which do not, for a fully automated process to discover and act on the nuances, in my opinion. For instance, the "standard" FICO scores. Here is a chart I refer to from time to time:
The Reality is, the score itself, for purposes of qualifying someone for an average rental, is much less important that what goes into the "formula" used to generate the number. If someone has had a lot of medical bills, or a foreclosure, or even a divorce, a lot of that history is not necessarily important today, for renting an average home or apartment. Often an individual has no control over what lead to those type of major life changes. What I DO look for is a pattern of poor choices that lead to the FICO score, whether it is low or high. If there are multiple credit card or cell phone companies with collection or past due balances, or recent car repos, charged off accounts, returned checks, judgments or evictions, and those type of "consumer credit" issues, then I have a big concern. I have seen plenty of scores in the 600- 650 range where the person was actually pretty solid with consistent payments, low balances, some savings, and stable employment with household income (
including subsidy amounts) that meets my typical 2.5 times the rent. If I simply relied on the FICO as a criteria, I would miss out on some decent tenants.
Usually, that pattern of poor choices will extend to their court records which I also review, and will likely result in denial. People in debt primarily due to medical, or even student loans, do not usually have a pattern of poor choices on their court records also. To take that one step further, I look very closely at those court records, including "just" the traffic citations. I have found it pretty common for someone that shows results of poor choices in their credit report, will also have similar results on their background checks. Ignoring the law, getting lots of speeding, or expired tag, no insurance type of citations, and of course DUI's, all tell me this is not someone I want to rent to. The last bit of the approve/deny puzzle is making sure the prospect has provided full information. Checking the current address on their paystub(s) or other documentation, with what is on their DL, and what they show as current address on the application can reveal missing info that you can call into question. Looking up the phone number for the company they claim to work for on line, and verifying employment through that number is also critical, vs calling a number or person provided by the applicant.
Sometimes you get applicants with no job, but lots of assets. These can sometimes take additional time and effort to verify, but this is definitely another variable that would be very difficult to automate, without missing out on some decent prospects.
Honestly, there have been many occasions where I showed a unit in the morning, the prospect brought their application and docs to our office after lunch, I processed the app, reviewed and signed the rental documents with the applicant, providing them a copy, collected cashier's check or money order for funds due, and moved them in before the end of the day...checking and responding to emails, phone calls,and other business in the interim.
