As a leasing agent, finding qualified tenants for your properties can make or break your company’s success. 

Your company’s profitability starts with your tenant screening process. Missing a key screening step or making a simple mistake can quickly result in costly and time-consuming litigation and even eviction. 

Whether you're a seasoned leasing professional or new to the real estate industry, you want to take the necessary steps to reduce the risk of approving an unqualified renter.

That's where we come in, ensuring that you have the resources you need to stay legally compliant, save time, and reduce the risk of approving a tenant that’s not the best fit for your property. This checklist covers the necessary steps to cover every base to keep your company and properties safe.

By the end of this article, you'll clearly understand how to improve your screening process and have a comprehensive checklist to get you started.

What Is Tenant Screening?

Every leasing agent and property manager wants reliable, responsible, and thoroughly-vetted tenants. However, screening every potential tenant for your property takes extensive time and resources. A reliable and efficient screening process is the best way to balance the time and resource cost of screening and mitigate the risk of signing a tenant that’s not a good fit for your property.

Tenant screening, or the systematized process of reviewing a potential tenant’s background and information before approving or denying their rental application, lets you vet prospective candidates more thoroughly and efficiently. 

Tenant screening is typically done one of three ways. First, it can be a fully-manual process, with each property manager taking the time to physically sort, review, vet, and approve or deny candidate applicants. Or, it can be fully automated with leasing software that digitally scans applications for the same red flags like poor credit or suspicious references. 

The third (and the best!) approach combines the two, using a fully-integrated software like Intellirent to provide additional support to the manual application review and approval process. 

The Ultimate Tenant Screening Checklist

A clear process and checklist are essential for a robust and reliable screening process, regardless of your chosen review approach. While we’ll dive into these specific line items more deeply in the post, here’s a ready-to-use list you can check to ensure a thorough tenant screening process.

• Define your ideal renter criteria
• Communicate your requirements to the prospective renter
• Have the prospective renter complete the entire application
• Collect necessary documentation
• Complete a background check and a credit report
• Contact the employer to verify income and employment status
• Contact previous landlords to verify rental history
• Review the complete application to determine if the applicant is qualified
• Contact the applicant to communicate approval or denial
• Store all documentation securely
  
  

Define Your Ideal Renter Criteria

It’s hard to attract your ideal tenant without clearly understanding who your ideal tenant is.  Your criteria will vary based on the property, business goals, and owner’s requirements. Still, it’s important to establish those requirements in advance to give yourself a better chance of finding a renter that’s a good fit for your property.  In addition to your criteria, local and state laws and requirements for tenant screening must be followed to ensure that you’re screening tenants fairly and equally, giving all qualified applicants the same chance of approval. 

Not sure exactly what the local and state requirements are surrounding rental criteria or the tenant screening process? Check your local or state government website, specifically your area's housing and even zoning ordinances.

Communicate Your Requirements to the Prospective Renter

Communicating your ideal renter criteria upfront (when appropriate) can save hours of time evaluating applications for renters who don’t meet the requirements. Of course, it’s not always appropriate to share all of your renter criteria, but if there are certain deal-breakers, communicating them upfront will help weed out applicants that won’t be a good fit for your property.  Pet requirements are a great example of a rental requirement that should be communicated upfront. We recommend posting renter requirements in your office or apartment buildings and proactively sending a copy to applicants along with your standardized rental application. 

Have the Prospective Renter Complete the Entire Application

One risk of paper applications, in addition to being more tedious for both the applicant and the leasing agent to complete and review, is there’s no stopping mechanism for flagging unanswered questions. Standardized electronic applications force potential renters to complete each section before moving on to the next. This ensures you get all the information you need to make an informed decision and empowers you to manage and store applications more securely.

Collect Necessary Documentation

In addition to a complete application, you need supporting documentation to verify the renter’s identity. This might include a copy of government-issued ID, proof of income like pay stubs, tax documents or bank statements, and assistive animal vaccine records or service-animal documentation. All these documents help prove that the applicant is who they claim to be and that you can trust them.

Complete a Background Check and Credit Report

In most cases, applications and documentation don’t tell an applicant’s full story. Completing a background check (depending on local laws) and credit report allows you to verify identity and gives you insight into the applicant’s legal and rental history. These reports would reveal red flags like violent crimes or a history of evictions, providing even more background data you can use to make leasing decisions. Similarly, they can also show green flags, like consistent payment history, job stability, and income level that you’d want in an ideal renter.

Review the Complete Application to Determine if the Applicant is Qualified

Once you have collected all the information you need to get an accurate view of the candidate, it’s time to holistically evaluate their application against the criteria you set in the first step. Of course, it’s unlikely that you’ll ever find an entirely “perfect” candidate, but seeing a candidate’s full profile can help you feel more confident when approving their rental application.

Contact the Applicant to Communicate Approval or Denial

Once you’ve found an applicant that confidently meets your requirements, approve them immediately! Some leasing agents may be tempted to pick and choose candidates or have multiple applicants approved and ready to go.  Don’t!

It’s actually illegal according to the Fair Housing Act. Ensure you’re fairly approving or denying candidates by tracking applications according to submission dates and supporting qualified applicants on a rolling basis. 

Store All Documentation Securely

Collecting renter information during the tenant screening is vital, but how you store that information might be even more so. For example, if you’re still using a paper application process, a secure file cabinet or lockbox can keep your tenants' protected information–like social security numbers–safe. 

If you’ve switched to a digital process, put a passcode on your computer or use locked folders to protect this data. Luckily, most leasing software offers a built-in security element that protects any information you or your applicants route through it.

Going Beyond a Tenant Screening Checklist

While a comprehensive tenant screening checklist is a fantastic tool to help you streamline your application screening process, it can only get you so far. To truly ensure that you’re finding qualified candidates quickly and that their information is accurate and secure, you need to incorporate automation.

Whether you’re looking to reduce the time you spend screening applications or looking to avoid costly mistakes, a robust tenant screening software like Intellirent can help.

We automate your application process and allow you to attract and screen qualified applicants, share data securely with other team members, eliminate duplicate data entry, and find a qualified renter in under 24 hours. Find out how Intellirent can help you streamline your application process by scheduling a product tour.