What Is Tenant Screening, And Why Is It Important?

Tenant screening can be an extremely valuable tool for every landlord. Difficult tenants cause real problems — a lack of transparency, friction with neighbors and co-tenants, and failure to comply with the rules of the tenancy. More importantly, they can end up costing a landlord a significant amount of money over time, and even lead to legal trouble.

To avoid the hassle of dealing with unreliable tenants, and the mess they leave behind, landlords rely on tenant screening. Here is what it actually involves.

So, what exactly is tenant screening?

Tenant screening is a process — or rather, a combination of various processes — which allows landlords to gain a better perspective on who they are considering as a rental applicant.

Credit checks are usually an important tool for landlords who want to understand an applicant's financial reliability. Eviction records, criminal records, and other background searches may also be used. Asking questions and talking to prospective tenants remains an affordable and effective screening method in its own right: it is not hard to gain a much better perspective on an applicant by asking the right questions.

Reference checks with prior landlords and with current and past employers are essential to the process. So is reviewing an applicant's credit profile, income, and supporting documents, to understand their rent-to-income ratio.

Recap

The key elements of tenant screening are:

• Credit and background check
• Landlord and employment reference check
• Proof of income
• Personal references

These are only the basic principles of tenant screening, and they are best treated as general guidelines. Screening is an essential part of the renting process and one that should not be taken lightly. Renting your property to the wrong person can lead to a host of problems, additional expense, and lost revenue. Screening the applicants who want to rent your property prevents a great many of those problems, and gives you more confidence in the people you entrust with it.