What We Look For When Screening Tenants

The main things we look for when screening tenants for our properties.

People often ask how we screen our tenants, and especially in an insane market like this one with many applications, we strive to be very careful with tenant screenings.  We first look for three basic qualifications: 

1. A minimum FICO score of 600. We only pull their score once.

2. No evictions or felonies.

3. Monthly income that’s at least three times the rent. However, this depends on the property, and we may change it up a bit. 

After we ascertain that they meet those three requirements, we look at just how much income they have. Are they very qualified or barely over the mark? Income is the biggest deterrent for me when screening tenants; if it comes down to two similar applications, I’ll choose someone with a better income over a better FICO score. I’m much more willing to work around a lower score than a lower income because your score can be affected by multiple things such as a divorce, student loan debt, a nearly-empty credit report, etc. It takes some skill to know what you’re looking at in credit reports because they’re not all the same.

 

We’ll also do employment verification. We call their employer to find out how long they’ve worked at their job, which is a key factor because if they’re flipping from job to job, I don’t expect their rent to always be paid on time. 

If you have any further questions or want to learn more about how we screen tenants, give us a shout via phone or email, and we’ll set up a time to discuss it. We would love to hear from you.