The Complete Guide to Tenant Screening for Your Rental Property

Identifying and vetting applicants for your rental property is one of, if not the singular most important aspect of managing a rental property. It is crucial to complete this step with the utmost attention to detail – while adhering to fair housing and rental laws. That’s why we at Progressive Property Management have an extensive breakdown on the tenant screening process along with best practices to know.

What is Tenant Screening?

Tenant screening, or screening a potential tenant's application, is the process of reviewing and verifying the information provided in lease applications. The purpose is to identify Tenants who are most likely to be reliable, financially stable, and lease-compliant renters.

For Landlords, screening is one of the more important steps in renting and managing your property. Before a tenant moves into a home, you as the landlord hold most of the control. Once someone moves in, they hold most of the control and you are limited by the lease contract.

Picture this – you select a renter who looks good on paper and can move in fast. But every day they call about a problem with a neighbor, need assistance with any and every maintenance question, cause disturbances in your HOA, maybe even call the city health inspector about concern of the water not being hot enough or creaking floor?

Tenant screening is your first and greatest way to protect your property and your own well being.

In the next sections, we’ll break down exactly how to screen tenants step by step, including what to verify, what to watch out for, and, most importantly, how to do it fairly, practically, and legally.

What is Your Goal for Screening a Tenant as a Landlord?

The goal of tenant screening is not to simply fill a vacancy – especially not as fast as possible! The goal is to select a tenant or group of tenants who protect your property, your rental income, and your time.

Every landlord will have their own requirements and preferences for a renter. So long as these requirements are applied equally across all applicants, you are legally safe.

Our professional opinion, though, is that you should base every screening decision on one core objective: long-term stability. This is done by determining:

Will they pay rent on time?

This is primarily determined by their income stability, credit history, and prior rental history

Will they follow the lease and house rules?

This is based on their rental history, references, and red flags from meeting in person and speaking with them.

Will they take care of the property?

This will come from past landlord feedback, the length of rental history in properties, and even their job and if it helps handle problems in the residence like being able to troubleshoot maintenance issues.

Will they create legal or safety risk – including risk to your emotional well-being and time?

This includes verifying identity, their purpose for seeking a new residence and experience in previous rental homes and through applying consistent screening standards

Tenant Screening should not be about finding the perfect tenant. It should not be about filling a vacancy as fast as possible. It should be about limiting risk and maximizing stability.

Pre-Screening Tenants First (and why you should do it)

The first step when screening tenants, is to pre-screen them before they even see the property.

Pre-screening is a simple filter you use to confirm if someone meets your basic requirements before you invest time touring the property, answering questions, and reviewing an application. The purpose is not to be harsh or intrusive, but to use a repeatable questionnaire to gain insight.

Pre-Screening Saves Time

Vetting people who are interested in your property allows you to pre-qualify them – telling them the standards and requirements you are aiming for, so both parties know where this process eventually ends at.

Pre-Screening Sets the Standard

Landlords who pre-screen set a professional standard in how you manage your property, and inversely, shows you the standard of renters by how responsive they are and how interested in the property they are.

Pre-Screening Questions to Ask

You must use the same questions for all tenants, to not overstep fair housing laws. You also don’t want to be too exhaustive in questions that may ward off potential tenants. As such, we recommend:

Asking their desired move-in date / move-in timeline
Asking why they are looking for a new residence
Stating what your standards are: credit, income, etc.
Asking what their availability is to tour the property

You can list other questions, such as stated income, if they have pets, number of occupants, or property-applicable questions, like it being age-restricted. The key here is to see where to focus your time with all the people who reach out and to know if someone refuses to answer these basic questions, they are most likely not going to be a good tenant.

How to Legally Screen Tenants

Your screening process should be consistent, documented, and compliant with state and local laws to avoid fair housing complaints, legal disputes, and unnecessary liability.

The key to tenant screening is simple – use objective criteria that you apply consistently.

Share Written Criteria Before You Accept Applications

The best protection a landlord can have is by being proactive with clear, written standards that should include things like:

Minimum income requirements
Credit standards
Occupancy limits
Pet policies

Follow Fair Housing Laws and Avoid Discriminatory Practices

Landlords must comply with Fair Housing laws, which prohibit discrimination based on sex, race, religion, disability, and more.

It is crucial to be objective when screening tenants, but you also have flexibility when you have multiple applications that meet your criteria. In this scenario you can look past just income, credit, and rental history and see who expressed clear enthusiasm about renting the home versus a tenant that is in a rush to find a place and may not like the property as much.

What Information do you Review in Tenant Screening?

A proper tenant screening should be thorough – after all, these are the people who will be residing in your property. This process should not be exhaustive for the tenant applying; rather, it should be for you, as the landlord, to review and verify their information and how it matches other applicants.

The Key Documents Involved

Income verification through bank statements, pay stubs, saving accounts
Credit report
Background screening report

The Personal Information Involved

Their job title, type of job (commission or salaried), and employment duration
Rental history and prior rent amounts
Prior landlord rental verification with a questionnaire or call
Desired move-in date
Number of occupants, pets, cars
Behavior in viewing the property, questions asked, and follow-up

Screening a tenant is meant to be ‘black and white’ but in fact has a lot of variances that go into it. For example, a person with a 750 credit score may appear strong, but how much debt do they carry each month, which can affect their available income for rent? Or is their job stable and salaried at a large company, or is it commission-based and fluctuates?

These nuances will be outlined below and in linked deep-dive articles

How To Review Reported Income?

Reviewing income goes beyond verifying an applicant earns enough to rent the property – even though that is the most important part. This process requires that you determine their income is stable, sufficient to support not just the rent but their debt servicing, and not subject to any disruptions.

Income verification is most likely to be simple if someone has an hourly or salaried job as their source of income, but can vary for individuals on retirement, using savings, on a commission basis job, or even self-employed.

Have a Clear Income Requirement

The income requirement is the amount of gross income (pre tax income) a renter needs to have to qualify to rent your property. In the case of multiple working adults that apply together, you combine their income as the total amount they earn.

Most landlords have an income requirement of 3x income to rent – meaning a $2,000 rental requires $6,000 in total income of all the adults living in the property.

We Recommend More than 3x Income to Rent

While 3x income to rent is the standard in most cases, we recommend a higher minimum requirement at 3.5x income minimum. The reason is simple – taxes and debt service on car loans, student loans, and credit cards will reduce the amount of money they have available for rent. This does flip if an applicant has no debt or minimal debt to pay each month by giving them a bigger availability of funds for rent.

Additionally, everyone will run into unplanned expenses – car repairs, family matters, travel – so the bigger the ‘gap’ between their minimum amount for rent and what they earn over that, helps to not disturb rental payments.

Require Verifiable Documentation

For most applicants, they will have full employment with a company earning hourly or salaried pay which you can confirm income by checking:

Pay stubs for multiple pay periods
Offer letters
Tax Returns

In other, non-standard cases if someone is self-employed, retired, or on commission you can request:

Bank statements
Retirement plan or Social Security letter
Tax Returns (minding high deductions for self-employed or contractors)

Source More Than One Income Verification

We highly recommend getting more than one income documentation. People can edit documents so protect yourself by checking pay stubs + that month’s bank statement.

Additionally, we recommend at least two months’ worth of documents to verify income.

You generally do not need to consider the future sustainability of an applicant's employment or confirmation of employment with an employer, but in some cases, this may be required. The key here is to determine they meet the income requirement, and it is the single most important factor in determining if someone qualifies for a property.

How To Review Credit Report Information?

Credit reports, like income verification, can be straightforward most of the time but do require more review than you may think at first glance. Many landlords focus only on the credit, but the credit score is just a summary and the details of the report is where the real story is.

The sections to review on the credit report are:

Credit Score
Monthly debt servicing (some reports give an estimate – some you have to manually calculate)
Open lines of credit and their payment history
Closed lines of credit and any bankruptcies

What is the Credit Score and Minimum Standards

This is a numerical score that measures how reliably someone borrows money and predicts the likelihood of repaying debt on time. The higher the score means the lower the risk on non-payment is for a lender.

Credit, while highly valuable in assessing someone's ability to repay debt, such as car loans, does not carry as much weight as income in determining rental risk. We recommend a minimum credit score of 600 or 650, but yours can be higher.

Important to note – some bad debt should not be weighed heavily against an applicant, such as medical debt, compared to outstanding car repayments that are high priority signals.

Key Sections to View on Credit Reports

There are three keys to evaluating a credit report – how much debt an applicant has in total, how much they service each month, and the history of their payments.

Total debt is based on how many lines of credit an applicant has. More does not always mean better as it allows individuals the possibility of going into higher debt and higher repayments.

Monthly payments is the average amount someone pays for their credit cards and loans, and this is highly important. It reduces the amount of money an applicant has for rent after taxes and mandatory loan obligations.

Payment history is usually over 24 months and shows how many times an applicant was late or failed to pay their debt on time. A recent history of non-payment is a worrying sign to consider seriously.

How To Review Background Check Information?

A background check has been a mainstay of prior years for judging an applicant for a rental property but California has recently decreed that criminal history is not to be subjective in rental applications. That said, the background check is still a useful tool and typically is included in the Credit Report.

Start with Identity Confirmation

The simplest but most useful tool of the background check is to verify that someone is who they say they are. There are instances of people applying under false names or prior addresses. This allows you to confirm their rental history matches the ID address.

Their Social Security Number is also important to have on hand, in case non-payment of rent occurs and you want to seek collection services after move-out.

Evaluating Eviction Records

Evictions are tricky, in the sense that an applicant could have been in process of being evicted and instead abandoned the property so an eviction was never finalized. This is why rental history is important.

But in the case of an eviction that was completed, it will be listed on their background report. Evictions are typically for non-payment of rent, and a landlord was forced to seek court-ordered and sheriff/police enforcement to gain possession of the property. That said, there have been instances where a tenant was unfairly evicted – whether it be to health and safety concerns they were dealing with, or personal matters, so keep this in mind and ask for clarification if so.

How To Review Rental History?

Rental history is one of the strongest predictors of future performance and shows how applicants have behaved as a tenant in the past. However, rental history can be a mixed signal or not available at all.

Rental history is reviewed by requesting the following from an applicant:

Past addresses
Amount of rent paid at each property
Length of duration they rented at each property
Reason for leaving the property
Contact information for the landlord or management company

Why You Should Verify Atleast Two Past Landlords

Most landlords will contact the most recent landlord to verify the details the applicant listed were true and leave it at that. We highly recommend contacting the 2nd prior landlord as well.

The reason is simple – the current landlord may give falsified information if they are seeking to be rid of a difficult or non-compliant tenant. But a landlord who is a stage removed will be more honest.

Ask Direct and Specific Questions

When contacting a prior landlord, you want to ask objective and simple questions. The reason is two parts.

First, more questions will lead to prior landlords not responding. Would you be more inclined to fill out a 5-item questionnaire, or a 20-question one?
Second, fiar housing limits you from asking subjective questions like “were they good people”. Stick to black and white questions to determine the stability an applicant has for your property.

The questions we recommend asking:

Is the reported rent and duration of lease accurate?
Did the tenant have late payments or NSF payments?
How many of each?
At move-out, did they receive over 50% or more of their deposit back? Why, if not?
Would you rent to them again? (this is optional, and leans into subjective)

Watch for inconsistencies in the rental history between the applicant and past landlords. Furthermore, if you cannot obtain prior rental history, or there is none if they lived with family or owned a home, you are left with one final option for review: how were the applicants in person?

What to Look for Beyond the Facts, and in the Tenants Themselves

Numbers, reports, and facts of an applicant's qualification for renting a property are the foundation of tenant screening, but they are not the only factors.

In fact, we believe that who an applicant is and how they behave are the second most important factors, after income verification.

The reason is simple – you form a contract and a relationship when a tenant moves into your property. Rent is not the only currency you deal with. Your time, your mental well-being and happiness are true factors to weigh in what it can cost when you have a confrontational, unhappy, or ill-equipped resident in your property

Communication and Consistency is Crucial

Throughout the touring, application, and follow-up processes, did the tenant communicate quickly, calmly, and professionally with you? Did what they said the first time they met you match the details you found in screening their application? These are keys to knowing someone’s character – something more valuable then just what they earn.

Do They Actually Like the Property?

The simplest, but more important question to weigh when reviewing your opinion of the tenant is to think: did they actually like the property?

You must rent your property to the most qualified tenant. That is true. But if multiple tenants meet your application criteria then we look at who actually liked the property, who can see themselves or their family there versus people who critiqued the paint color, the layout, how old the appliances looked.

Someone who likes the property they live in, make life so much easier as a landlord.

Remember, Be Objective

Identifying someone's character and behavior when meeting in person is important, but this does fall under subjective information. It should only be used when there are multiple applicants that meet your minimum criteria, and even then, it should be weighed less favorably if an applicant is 2x as strong on paper over someone else.

What Questions a Landlord CAN Ask

When communicating with tenants, always keep in mind the requirement to be objective and to ask questions that evaluate a tenants ability to pay the rent and take care of the property. Some questions to ask include:

What is your current employment or job situation?
What has you looking for a new residence?
What about my property made you want to view it?
Do you have any pets? If so, what kind and how many?
Are the pets comfort or service animals?
How long do you prefer to stay in the property if you moved in?
Have you ever had to break a lease early?

What Questions a Landlord CANNOT Ask

Never ask disqualifying questions about fair housing protected characteristics which are:

Race, color, national origin, ancestry, or ethnicity
Religion or religious practices
Marital status, sexual orientation, or gender identity
Familial status (married, having children, pregnancy, custody of kids)
Disabilities, medical conditions, or if receiving disability benefits
Age, unless the property legally qualifies as age-restricted housing
Criminal history

How to Select and/or Deny Tenants for Your Property

Once you have reviewed the tenant’s application as outlined in the above sections, you must then respond to them within a reasonable timeframe on if they have been approved or denied for renting the property.

Reasonable time varies by person, but our recommendation is to set a date to review all applications and share it with tenants who have viewed the home and plan to submit an application. This sets an expectation for a response timeframe and gives you room to review multiple applications together.

Document Your Decision or Develop a Scorecard

To avoid subjectivity and ambiguity, you should write out your evaluation of any tenant who meets the minimum criteria.

It can be as simple as a bullet-point list of income, credit, rental history, and pros and cons to compare all applicants side by side.

A better method is to make a tenant scorecard, that allows you to give a score based on the screening criteria. For example, a 600 – 675 credit score is 1 point, while a 676-750 score is 2 points.

Notifying Tenants of your Decision

Once you have evaluated their applications, you need to update tenants of your decision.

If a tenant does not meet your property criteria (insufficient income, poor credit, negative rental history, false information, unverifiable employment) you simply tell them they are denied based on that detail.

If the denial is because you chose a stronger candidate, let them know you selected a different tenant who is similarly qualified for the property, which is a valid stance.

If a tenant meets your standards and you wish to move forward, then submit an offer of residency to them. This does not need to be in writing and can be a simple call or text.

An Approved Application is Just the First Step

After you have approved an applicant for the property, the real work begins to secure them and involves:

Drafting a lease agreement for both parties to review and agree to terms
Sending the lease agreement for both you and the tenants to sign and formalize
Requesting a holding deposit to prevent the tenants from backing out of the lease without penalty
Getting the property move-in ready
Getting the tenant settled with utilities turned on in their name, a copy of their renter’s insurance, and the move-in funds secured

Where to Find Screening Reports for Tenants

There are multiple websites and applications for sending or receiving screening reports, and these can cover the credit and background report at a minimum or be extensive and include personal information, rental history, and documents uploaded for rental income.

Keep in mind one important rule: never accept an application directly from a tenant. It can be edited. You must pull the report or have it sourced through third-party software, and you can enforce this requirement even if a tenant already has their report pre-generated. Request a new one in X software if they want it reviewed for the property.

Sources for Screening Reports

Zillow’s Rental Manager is reputable and eligible if you make a free Zillow profile
TransUnion SmartMove
RentPrep
TenantReports.com
Local real estate or management companies

Worst Practices to Follow for Screening Tenants – Do Not Do These!

While we have gone over what to do when screening tenants, it is just as important to reiterate what NOT to do as well to point out the most incorrect practices you should not be doing yourself. This list could be endlessly extensive, but the most common ones to avoid are:

Skipping verification to fill vacancy faster
Only trusting verbal income claims and not collecting proof
Not calling past landlords
Only calling the current landlord
Ignoring late-payment patterns
Accepting incomplete applications
Renting to someone because you “feel bad”
Applying different standards to different applicants
Ignoring debt-to-income ratios and pressure
Saying you do not accept Section 8 / Housing Authority payments
Denying an applicant based on them having a service or emotional support animal

FAQs

What credit score should I require?: There is no legally required minimum credit score in California. Many landlords use a baseline between 650–700, but the score alone should not determine approval. Payment history, debt load, and rental-related collections matter more than the number itself. Your standard should be written and applied consistently to every applicant.
Can I deny someone for bad credit?: Yes, you can deny an applicant for not meeting your written credit standards, as long as the decision is based on objective financial criteria and not discrimination. If the denial is based on a credit report, you must provide an adverse action notice in compliance with consumer reporting laws.
Can I deny someone for having no credit history?: Yes, you can deny an applicant for not meeting your written credit criteria. However, no credit is different from bad credit. Some landlords choose to approve applicants with no credit if they have strong income, stable employment, and possibly a qualified co-signer. The key is consistency in how you handle these situations.
What’s the best tenant screening service?: The best screening service is one that provides a full credit report, eviction history search, criminal background check (where legally permitted), and identity verification. Established providers and property management platforms are typically the safest choice. Avoid informal or unverified background check websites.
How long does screening take?: Most professional screening reports are available within minutes to 24 hours once the applicant submits their information and authorization. Delays usually occur when income verification or landlord references require manual confirmation.
Can I deny a tenant with a prior eviction?: Yes, but the decision should be based on your written screening criteria. A recent eviction with a judgment is generally considered a significant risk factor. Always verify the details and apply your standards consistently.
Can I refuse applicants who use Section 8 or housing vouchers?: No. In California, source of income is a protected category. Landlords cannot reject applicants solely because they use housing assistance or vouchers, provided they otherwise meet screening criteria.
Can I run a background check without permission?: No. Written authorization is required before pulling credit or background reports. Running reports without consent violates consumer reporting laws.
What is the biggest mistake landlords make when screening tenants?: The most common mistake is lowering standards due to vacancy pressure. Skipping verification steps or ignoring red flags often leads to missed rent, property damage, or eviction.
How can I verify that a landlord reference is legitimate?: Always confirm the person you are speaking to actually owns or manages the property. You can verify ownership through public property records. Be cautious if the reference uses a personal phone number with no verifiable connection to the property or provides vague answers about the tenancy.
Can I require a co-signer or guarantor?: Yes, landlords may require a qualified co-signer if the applicant does not meet income or credit standards. The co-signer should meet your financial criteria independently and sign the lease or a guarantor agreement making them legally responsible for unpaid rent or damages.
Can I deny someone for having too much debt?: Yes, if high debt materially affects their ability to afford rent under your written criteria. A strong income with moderate debt may still qualify, but excessive debt combined with high credit utilization can increase missed payment risk. Decisions should be based on documented financial capacity, not assumptions.
Do I have to accept the first qualified applicant?: No, but you must use a consistent selection policy. Some landlords approve the first fully qualified applicant. Others review all applications received within a defined timeframe and select the most qualified based on objective standards. The important factor is applying the same method every time.

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