A thorough screening process can include background and credit checks, employment and income verification, and rental history review, ensuring that you select tenants who are financially stable, trustworthy, and likely to uphold their lease agreements.

I've always been self employed, but if you have a stable W2 job, lender underwriting should be pretty easy and painless to get approved for a loan and see what you qualify for on financing.Good luck!

2) If I do qualify as a REP, and this is my business, does this mean I need to file a Schedule C now, and pay income and self employment taxes?

The self-employed business thing in a residential area I don't have much experience. 

.)- Workers Compensation (even if you are not employing anyone)There are other coverage to consider depending on your operations.   

I am in the middle of planning my own exit from W2 employment and I am agonizing over finding qualified and unbiased counsel on planning. 

Most employers don't care about degrees or certs, they want to see actual applications/projects you worked on and your code.

Once we have a completed application, we verify income (by calling the employer and/or with paystubs), verify previous address history (this will show up on the credit check, we ask about any addresses that show up on the credit check but are not listed on their application), and verify identity by requesting a copy of their photo ID to make sure their info matches the application and screening reports.Next, we run credit, criminal, and eviction reports.

Think about things like crime rates, employment growth, the caliber of the schools, and facilities while assessing neighborhoods.

my apology for not being clear, we had the background check, they seem to be okay, -- they are self employed but income looks good although I haven't verify because they hav't agreed to supply SSN before lease signing.On top of BG check we require Tenant provide SSN for extra protection, never had a problem with Tenants before till recently, not sure it has anything to do with the new law in CO