You don't know if his new career choice in his first week is trafficking sex slaves through austin....Or if he has a nice habit of blasting music at midnight....You get the point.....Someone without a steady full time job/school has proven trouble to me in tenants with too much time on their hands....

And 3 of the current residents are all registered sex offenders.

It is illegal to discriminate based on race, religion, sex, etc... a landlord running a credit check on one potential tenant and not the other is an example of discrimination.Other than that, once you've verified your tenant you will feel comfortable handing over the keys to the property.

So you can't mention anything in your ads about race, color, national origin, sex, religion, disability, or familial status. 

We verbally pre-screen them to make sure they don't have evictions or sex offenses or too low of income.

I just ran a search and figured out that a registered sex offender is currently living in one of the units.

Giving any controll over the property makes me nervous, you never know, they could foreclose.I understand a DT is easier to create, and a lien would require a court to make a judgement, (since its not a mechanics lien), but with a lien they cant take controll of the property.Is there a tpe of lien that isnt a mechanics lien a doesnt require a court judgement?

As others have mentioned, you have to establish criteria for acceptance and rejection ahead of time and put that into writing; in your criteria, you can say what sorts of offenses are worthy of forgiveness (such as misdemeanors more than 5 years ago) and those unforgivable (sex offense).  

That doesn't mean you should be afraid to say no if you find out he's a sex offender, felon, or has a history of evictions and judgments.

The Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) prohibits harassment and discrimination in employment because of race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, national origin, ancestry, mental and physical disability, medical condition, age, pregnancy, denial of ... www.dfeh.ca.gov/Publications_FEHADescr.htm Even though the above definition does not specifically state this applies to housing the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing brochure below says as much. http://www.dfeh.ca.gov/res/docs/Publications/DFEH-157H.pdf And yes I agree - bad information is worse than no information.