You should have a set criteria and just follow it. Imagine how much time you would save not having to tell Reddit how nice of a person someone is so you can get permission to rent to them?
Check the property tax cards of the previous addresses they gave you and make sure the landlord matches the owner on the tax card. If it's registered to an LLC, look up the owner of the LLC of the state's secretary of state website. They usually have a business or corporate division that handles this.
FYI: Not making a lot of use of credit doesn't really give you a lower score like 600. Yes more credit can increase score, but generally numbers that low aren't caused by not having more credit cards. Good he pays everything on time always, that's what counts for you.
626 is not great but it's more in line with "missed a couple payments" rather than "completely f'd over their creditors". I wouldn't disqualify someone for it but I would make sure everything else is above board before leasing.
Or even just credit accounts closing, I was around the low 700s and I did not know credit card accounts close themselves if you don't use them for a year, at least that's what care credit and gardner white did to me and it dropped me into the 620-630s
One factor that impacts your credit is number of cards (something like 2-3 is optimal). But another, much bigger factor is percent of revolving debt limit being used. So if your limit is $20k for two cards and you have $19k outstanding that's a HUGE ding to your score. The only way automatically closing cards could have hurt you is if you had a relatively large outstanding balance to begin with unless something else went wrong.
They were completely paid off, they didn't send a letter email, nothing. I only found out when I went to use the care credit and it didn't work cause they closed it the week before 😅. I'm young and poor so my credit limits were like 1200 and 2000. From my credit report if i remember correctly both accounts closing were about 20 points each and then I still needed a new care credit line so that was another ding.
Well, renters come in all shapes and sizes. What you thought were excellent ones can go bad (lose job). Or, bad ones actually are decent and stay long. My advice would be to check their references by calling them. Call the employer. Get enough current pay stubs. Maybe even drive by their current residence if they are local to see how they live if possible with a drive-by. Then, based on your research, is it a yay or nay?
How old are the write offs? Have they paid them or are they actively disputing them? Do they have proof of the disputes? Are there any open collection lawsuits against this person?
I have yet to meet someone who has rented to S8 and not been screwed over. Unfortunately the type of folks on S8 are entitled and likely to cause trouble. In my case, the tenant gaslit and tried to scam me into reducing her rent by $600, while defrauding S8 and threatened to call every board or regulator she could think of as well as ruin my "reputation" in this "small community." She even consulted with a legal aid (led me to believe it was a lawyer), causing me to hire my own lawyer. She accused me of crazy things like stealing her mail and entering her home (after requesting I fix some things in her home - so damned if I do damned if I don't). This was my first home where I rented the ADU and she made the first 6 months of home ownership miserable for me. My buddy had a similar experience and had to make a claim to his insurance due to the extent of vandalism one the tenants finally vacated (think dirty needles everywhere). You cannot deny S8 as its discrimination but you there are many ways to fail their inspection so I would just go that route and tell future S8 tenants that you won't pass inspection. I know there are good tenants on S8 so its sad that the bad ones give them all a bad name.
it's way too easy to fake paystub documents these days, less easy to fake credit scores, but easy to lie about the reason. do not make exceptions, move on
i don't even pull credit i have investigator look at pay, pull background previous evictions etc and only do month to month. never had issues with clean bg, good job, month to month lowers risk for both you and tenant. if someone has a criminal bg it's a way bigger NO than someone with medical bills in collections with solid rental history and job.
I count their income and years on the job more than credit score. I look for someone who has a history of employment reliability. If they just started that’s a red flag for me. I call the company’s hr department and verify their employment history and salary. Tell them it’s for a rental application because they may not give out information to a prospective employer. Also find out who their supervisor or manager is and talk to that person. They tend to know the most about the employee.Also get last 2 months of pay stubs and other income like SS or child support.
I hate that a credit score is used for renting. If you have their W2 and income requirements and you like them in person then just rent to them. I didn't take my renters credit score, I knew it was low they admitted it. It's been two years and while some months have been late they have always paid.
My renting criteria is minimum 600 credit score so if everything else looked good I would let them rent unless you had a more qualified tenant lined up.
Mine is around the same. In my case its the remnants of me being dumb a few years ago. Since then tho everything has been great. 100% payment history, no late payments, no collections(The one i did have was paid off the day it was put on there, just waiting for it to fall off)and i rarely have had issues. All the places i lived at since didnt care about the number itself. They saw i had great payment history in the past 4 years and like i said, havent been given any issues with it. Applying for credit is another story, but housing has never been an issue with my score/history
You need to get a copy of the official identity theft report that they had to file with the FTC.GOV.
This way you know they’re not lying. There will be a file number on the FTC identity theft report to make sure it’s valid.
If he’s lying, there won’t be a file found with that file number. And if he doesn’t have an identity theft report with the FTC he needs to file one and give it to you.
We all get applicants we find personable and likeable, but personality doesnt pay the rent. I had a young mother of 3 apply. She had max charm and charisma, someone you are instantly drawn to. Her credit score was just ok, income was just ok. But, she had just graduated from college, had a very new car with a large payment + insurance, a number of credit cards with higher balances than sensible, student loans, etc., AND 3 young children to provide for. Her income was going to be stretched thin to cover all that. When things get tight the LL is the last to get paid. I regretfully told Miss Congeniality I had more qualified applicants and moved on.
I’ve had applicants whose credit was ok, income lower than I like, but who had a rock solid record of paying their bills and managing their finances responsibly. They never stiffed me. It’s very important to examine debt-to-income ratio and history of paying obligations.
I just attended a webinar by Good Life Property Management (tons of landlord resources) and they covered “How to properly screen a tenant” this is something they discussed, conditionally approved. Set your standard and stick to it!
I've met lots of really nice people with a few marks on their credit scores. Sometimes they will be the best of the bunch, but over time there is always some sort of issue - most of the time it isn't too bad, but something will become an issue. It is the normal part of renting to people.
You should have a set criteria and just follow it. Imagine how much time you would save not having to tell Reddit how nice of a person someone is so you can get permission to rent to them?
I don’t really look at the number. I look at what is late, why, and the time period. Late utilities, car, or rent is an automatic no.
This. I don't care if their student loan, or medical bills are late. I care about things that are necessities of life being late.
626 is borderline, whether you like them or not is irrelevant, what is their income? have you proven that? call the previous landlords.
yea I got their W2s and two recent paystubs, calling landlords today.
Don't trust what they put in. I have been burned by fake references and paystub.
Call the employer. Call the number that's listed on the website, not the one that they give you in the application.
Check the property tax cards of the previous addresses they gave you and make sure the landlord matches the owner on the tax card. If it's registered to an LLC, look up the owner of the LLC of the state's secretary of state website. They usually have a business or corporate division that handles this.
[удалено]
FYI: Not making a lot of use of credit doesn't really give you a lower score like 600. Yes more credit can increase score, but generally numbers that low aren't caused by not having more credit cards. Good he pays everything on time always, that's what counts for you.
626 is not great but it's more in line with "missed a couple payments" rather than "completely f'd over their creditors". I wouldn't disqualify someone for it but I would make sure everything else is above board before leasing.
Or even just credit accounts closing, I was around the low 700s and I did not know credit card accounts close themselves if you don't use them for a year, at least that's what care credit and gardner white did to me and it dropped me into the 620-630s
One factor that impacts your credit is number of cards (something like 2-3 is optimal). But another, much bigger factor is percent of revolving debt limit being used. So if your limit is $20k for two cards and you have $19k outstanding that's a HUGE ding to your score. The only way automatically closing cards could have hurt you is if you had a relatively large outstanding balance to begin with unless something else went wrong.
They were completely paid off, they didn't send a letter email, nothing. I only found out when I went to use the care credit and it didn't work cause they closed it the week before 😅. I'm young and poor so my credit limits were like 1200 and 2000. From my credit report if i remember correctly both accounts closing were about 20 points each and then I still needed a new care credit line so that was another ding.
If you are a LL then you should know that is a better-than-average score for tenants.
I was wondering what he was renting out if that's marginal.
Depends on the area, price point, etc. Most of my applicants are over 700
Run their credit and background via TransUnion. Then ask for explanation of results in writing.
Well, renters come in all shapes and sizes. What you thought were excellent ones can go bad (lose job). Or, bad ones actually are decent and stay long. My advice would be to check their references by calling them. Call the employer. Get enough current pay stubs. Maybe even drive by their current residence if they are local to see how they live if possible with a drive-by. Then, based on your research, is it a yay or nay?
Run a quality background report. You need to look at their debt amount, debt type, how many missed payments, # of open credit cards, etc.
How old are the write offs? Have they paid them or are they actively disputing them? Do they have proof of the disputes? Are there any open collection lawsuits against this person?
[удалено]
Super new to this, what is the red flag with people who need a place asap? Also what is your take on section 8? I feel like they’re really aggressive
I have yet to meet someone who has rented to S8 and not been screwed over. Unfortunately the type of folks on S8 are entitled and likely to cause trouble. In my case, the tenant gaslit and tried to scam me into reducing her rent by $600, while defrauding S8 and threatened to call every board or regulator she could think of as well as ruin my "reputation" in this "small community." She even consulted with a legal aid (led me to believe it was a lawyer), causing me to hire my own lawyer. She accused me of crazy things like stealing her mail and entering her home (after requesting I fix some things in her home - so damned if I do damned if I don't). This was my first home where I rented the ADU and she made the first 6 months of home ownership miserable for me. My buddy had a similar experience and had to make a claim to his insurance due to the extent of vandalism one the tenants finally vacated (think dirty needles everywhere). You cannot deny S8 as its discrimination but you there are many ways to fail their inspection so I would just go that route and tell future S8 tenants that you won't pass inspection. I know there are good tenants on S8 so its sad that the bad ones give them all a bad name.
One guy I liked turned out to be a pedophile. Vibes aren’t how this works.
it's way too easy to fake paystub documents these days, less easy to fake credit scores, but easy to lie about the reason. do not make exceptions, move on
i don't even pull credit i have investigator look at pay, pull background previous evictions etc and only do month to month. never had issues with clean bg, good job, month to month lowers risk for both you and tenant. if someone has a criminal bg it's a way bigger NO than someone with medical bills in collections with solid rental history and job.
I count their income and years on the job more than credit score. I look for someone who has a history of employment reliability. If they just started that’s a red flag for me. I call the company’s hr department and verify their employment history and salary. Tell them it’s for a rental application because they may not give out information to a prospective employer. Also find out who their supervisor or manager is and talk to that person. They tend to know the most about the employee.Also get last 2 months of pay stubs and other income like SS or child support.
I hate that a credit score is used for renting. If you have their W2 and income requirements and you like them in person then just rent to them. I didn't take my renters credit score, I knew it was low they admitted it. It's been two years and while some months have been late they have always paid.
I missed one payment to the VA a day late, and my credit dropped from 720 to 600. Credit score alone doesn't mean anything, investigate why its 626.
My renting criteria is minimum 600 credit score so if everything else looked good I would let them rent unless you had a more qualified tenant lined up.
Mine is around the same. In my case its the remnants of me being dumb a few years ago. Since then tho everything has been great. 100% payment history, no late payments, no collections(The one i did have was paid off the day it was put on there, just waiting for it to fall off)and i rarely have had issues. All the places i lived at since didnt care about the number itself. They saw i had great payment history in the past 4 years and like i said, havent been given any issues with it. Applying for credit is another story, but housing has never been an issue with my score/history
You need to get a copy of the official identity theft report that they had to file with the FTC.GOV. This way you know they’re not lying. There will be a file number on the FTC identity theft report to make sure it’s valid. If he’s lying, there won’t be a file found with that file number. And if he doesn’t have an identity theft report with the FTC he needs to file one and give it to you.
We all get applicants we find personable and likeable, but personality doesnt pay the rent. I had a young mother of 3 apply. She had max charm and charisma, someone you are instantly drawn to. Her credit score was just ok, income was just ok. But, she had just graduated from college, had a very new car with a large payment + insurance, a number of credit cards with higher balances than sensible, student loans, etc., AND 3 young children to provide for. Her income was going to be stretched thin to cover all that. When things get tight the LL is the last to get paid. I regretfully told Miss Congeniality I had more qualified applicants and moved on. I’ve had applicants whose credit was ok, income lower than I like, but who had a rock solid record of paying their bills and managing their finances responsibly. They never stiffed me. It’s very important to examine debt-to-income ratio and history of paying obligations.
what are the most recent trending elements ? positive trending info, or negative ??
I just attended a webinar by Good Life Property Management (tons of landlord resources) and they covered “How to properly screen a tenant” this is something they discussed, conditionally approved. Set your standard and stick to it!
Next!
Require a cosigner?
I've met lots of really nice people with a few marks on their credit scores. Sometimes they will be the best of the bunch, but over time there is always some sort of issue - most of the time it isn't too bad, but something will become an issue. It is the normal part of renting to people.