Since you're still in college, you can also use your education as employment history when applying for a mortgage.Overall, it's important to be proactive and do your research when it comes to preparing for a rental property investment.

They are great at verifying identity and address history.

I believe bad tenants cost you WAY more than a few $$/month, so make sure you have a plan to do your due diligence (credit, criminal, rental history, income verification).Also, I agree with @Patrick M.

Now you’ll find yourself running into some hurdles, they’ll want to see work history, paystubs, etc., to make sure you can make the payments.

Joe Schmoe62 years old$4,300 a month gross incomePlans on retiring in 3 years, wants to downsize to a more affordable unit in preparation.All seems great to me so far, but upon running his information (I used "MyRental" for the credit/background check), found that he has an extremely limited credit history?

@Gerald DoughertyWe list on apartments, require an application which has credit and background checks prior to looking at a listing at all.This will weed out, like Nathan said, the tire kickers and such.We quit using FB, everyone gets tagged, 99% of them don't or wouldn't qualify, messages in the middle of the night, ect.As far as credit score, we don't have a criteria for that but we analyze their credit history more than looking at the score itself.

Both are qualified in terms of income, credit, and criminal history.

How do I record the expense (my payment) to the water authority.

Maybe he does not have good credit history and/or down payments (10% to 25%), but he might be able to qualify for FHA loan by paying lower down payment (as low as 3.5%).

The landscaper incident does not involve two joint owners of property, but a contractor doing work on a property (whether authorized or not).If these two had a written agreement in place about sharing the costs of improvements that's another story, but he volunteered to fix up his own home with his own money.