I have to send a rejection letter?

ACH with the option to reject rent or tenant drop off with the option to reject rent.I started using my attorney's office as a drop off location so the rent could be rejected if the amount was not the total amount.  

(coincidentally she had the highest credit score out of all the applicants).Keep in mind if someone has a Section 8 Voucher I give a LOT of leeway on what their credit score is.....I also don't care much about the "income" because I know most if not all of the rent is paid by Section 8......However, if I see a felony or eviction on that background check in the last 5 years.....they are automatically rejected....................If two candidates are fairly equal regarding credit scores, etc....then I will also look at who smokes....anything....at all.......I don't allow smoking of anykind in my rentals in Oakland and Concord....i don't care if it;s legal or not....I will also look at if they have an animal or pet (there's a difference) or not.....I do not allow any pets in my rentals in California......and I will look at how many people will live there....the less the better.In Cleveland, I can't really control all of this because my property manager will deal with this on a day to day basis, but if I happen to get a phone call or text from a potential renter in Cleveland you can best believe I ask these types of questions before I pass the info on to my property manager.

I would reject them.

I have experienced these many times, a small number may be legitimate most are lies, but I never waste time unravelling applicants complicated lives I simply reject their applications rather than waste my valuable time.If you have spent 5 days on this in my opinion you spent about 4 days and 23 hrs. too much.

If this is a renewal lease, electronic payments will begin on the first month of the lease and will continue each month and end on last month of the lease.To avoid Non-Sufficient Funds (NSF) return/rejection, available and unrestricted funds must be in the Tenant's bank account on the first day of each month.

It took us some trial and error to find something that works, but now it is cut and dried where each applicant is rejected, accepted, or put in a holding pattern.That breed is not on my "NO" list, and I feel that big dogs are better to landlords than the little ones that pee all over the carpet.  

The guy who has a drug possession charge from a few years back that he pled no contest to because he couldn't afford bail and needed to get out of jail to get back to his minimum wage job to support his kids, he has a good chance of being fine. ...So, we then raise the question: how do you word your tenant acceptance / rejection criteria so as to allow for monthly gross income to be less than 3x monthly rent without discriminating against the non-voucher tenant?  

I'd like to develop written criteria that allows me to both reject, at my discretion, tenants with red flags, and accept on a case-by-case basis others who might have similar red flags but  after interviewing/checking with references might appear to be genuinely attempting to get their life back on track.

From my own experience, if I simply stick to these items and know nothing else, I manage an excellent batting average when it comes to tenant selection.First off, if ANY of the adults who will be on the lease have evictions or violent or drug related criminal convictions, I reject the entire group/family.