How to find (and verify) good tenants: a process landlords can repeat

Disclaimer: This article is not legal advice. We encourage you to consult a local real estate attorney for guidance on this or any other legal topic.

A reliable tenant means rent paid on time, a property in good shape, and often a renewal. A tenant who can't or won't pay means months of lost rent, court filings, and legal fees before you can even re-list. And the application in front of you won't always tell you which one you're getting, because pay stubs, bank statements, and offer letters can now be faked almost instantly with free AI tools.

What you can control is the process: set clear rental criteria before you list, check every applicant in the same way, and verify the information they provide you at the source. Done by hand, that means phone calls, paperwork, and a lot of legal fine print. The right tenant screening software can handle most of it for you, so every decision is consistent, fast, and one you can stand behind.

Decide what qualifies a tenant before you list

Before you list, write down your tenant screening criteria: what an applicant needs to qualify. Having it in writing lets you approve someone quickly, explain a denial clearly, and hold every applicant to the same bar.

What tenant screening criteria should cover

Keep it short enough to put in your listing. Most landlords cover:

• Income. Monthly income of about two and a half to three times the rent is common. Use a multiple instead of a dollar amount so the rule works for every unit you own and remember that in many jurisdictions you cannot discriminate based on the source of the income, vouchers and subsidies.
• Credit. A minimum score (620 to 650 is common, and higher in competitive markets), or a rule about what you won't accept (like accounts in collections in the past two years). Pick one before you review any reports.
• Eviction history. How many years back you'll look, and how you'll treat an older case.
• Criminal history. In accordance with what your local law permits, spell out which convictions count, including nature and severity and evidence of rehabilitation and how recent they have to be.
• Pets, smoking, and household size. Your limits (within local occupancy rules), plus any pet fees or deposits.
• Move-in date. The earliest and latest dates that work for you.

Date the document, and date any changes. If anyone ever asks how you made a decision, it shows every applicant was measured against the same requirements.

Screening software makes this part easy. With RentSpree, you set your screening criteria in your account before the first applicant arrives, so you're checking every applicant against the same bar.

Why the same standard for every applicant can protect you

The federal Fair Housing Act makes it illegal to treat applicants differently because of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, familial status, or disability, and many states and cities protect more groups. Without a written standard, choosing the applicant who "seemed more responsible" is a judgment you can't back up, and violations don't have to be intentional to count.

If an applicant files a complaint, you could face an investigation, pay damages, owe a federal civil penalty of more than $26,000 for a first violation in addition to potential state and local fines, and have to cover legal fees for both sides. Documented standards protect you and your applicants alike.

Choose screening software that does the heavy lifting

Every step in this process can be done by hand: calling employers, requesting court records, tracking local rules, and drafting denial letters. Tenant screening software does most of that for you, often at no cost to the landlord, and it applies your requirements the same way every time.

Look for a tool that covers:

• Credit, eviction, and criminal reports in one request, pulled from a major credit bureau like TransUnion.
• Bank-verified income, so you're not relying on pay stubs that are easy to fake.
• Fast results, ideally within hours, so qualified applicants don't move on while they wait.
• Local screening rules, including the required order for criminal checks in areas that require conditional acceptance.
• Built-in denial notices, so the adverse action notice the law requires when you turn down an applicant goes out without extra work.
• Free listing distribution to major rental sites, so one listing reaches renters on Zillow, Redfin, Apartments.com, Zumper, and more without posting to each site by hand.

RentSpree covers all six, and it's free for landlords to use. Applicants typically pay a $39.99 application fee where local law allows it, and most reports come back within two hours.

Reach enough renters to find the right one

No single listing site reaches everyone looking for a rental in your area. The wider you cast your net, the more qualified applicants you'll hear from.

Price to the market, not to your mortgage

Renters compare your unit to everything else nearby. To price competitively, look at similar rentals within a mile and price against them, not what you need to cover your mortgage or turn a profit.

RentSpree's rent estimate report pulls rents for comparable rentals near your property, so you can calculate your rental rate from real market data instead of guesswork.

Publish your criteria in the listing

Put the rent, deposit, income requirement, pet policy, and screening fee in the listing itself. People who don't qualify can move on and you skip showings that won't turn into a lease.

Include clear, professional photos of every room, what the rent covers, and an easy way to book a showing. Those details help you advertise a rental property that gets qualified responses.

List where renters are already looking

Most renters search on a few large sites: Zillow, Apartments.com, Zumper, Redfin, and Realtor.com. Listing syndication lets you create one listing that's shared to all of them automatically. Most tenant screening tools only syndicate to a limited number of sites, and many skip Zillow entirely. That means you either miss out on a large number of potential applicants, or you’re left managing your listing in multiple different places. 

RentSpree posts your listing to all five for free, so renters see it wherever they're looking.

If you work with a real estate agent, RentSpree is partnered with 300+ MLS systems (the listing databases real estate agents use) and REALTOR® associations. Your agent can add an application link to the MLS listing, so renters who hear about the property through their agents can apply the same way.

Collect complete applications, then verify every claim

An application tells you what the applicant says about their income, their rental history, and who they are. Tenant screening checks whether it's true.

Don't treat uploaded documents as proof. Pay stubs, bank statements, and offer letters are easy to fake with AI tools, and a fake can look exactly like the real thing. Instead, verify each claim with the source itself: the credit bureau, court records, and the applicant's bank.

Credit, eviction, and criminal history in one report

A typical screening report from a tenant screening service covers credit, eviction history, and criminal history.

While many tools pull from similar data, the gap is often in how quickly reports come back. Qualified applicants usually consider several rentals at once, so the landlord who can approve first has the best shot at signing them. Some tools return reports in hours, while others can take days. With RentSpree, most reports come back within two hours.

RentSpree's screening report pulls all three through TransUnion, including a ResidentScore® (a credit score built for rental decisions), eviction history from more than 25 million records, and a criminal background check where local law allows it. The credit check is a soft inquiry, so it won't hurt the applicant's score.

When local law requires conditional acceptance

Some cities and states won't allow you to run a criminal background check until you've made a conditional offer of housing based on credit, eviction history, and income checks. This is called conditional acceptance, and it's the rule in markets like Cook County, Illinois; Detroit, Michigan; Ann Arbor, Michigan; Berkeley, California; Oakland, California; Washington, D.C.; Maryland; and New Jersey.

Many tenant screening tools leave you to manage the process manually, which can open you up to legal risk. RentSpree builds conditional acceptance into the screening workflow. When an application comes from one of the conditional acceptance markets listed above, you review credit, eviction history, and income first, conditionally accept the applicant from your dashboard, and only then see the criminal report.

Verify income at the source, not the pay stub

There are a few ways to verify income, and they aren't equally reliable. Some screening tools only let applicants upload pay stubs, bank statements, or offer letters. Those documents are easy to fake with free AI tools, so a document-only check means you're mostly taking the applicant's word for it.

Bank-verified income is more reliable. The applicant securely connects their bank account, and you see the actual deposits hitting it over the past 12 to 24 months, without ever seeing their login.

RentSpree's screening package adds bank-verified income (through Finicity, a Mastercard® company) plus automated landlord reference checks, for $10 more per screening. It's available on the free plan and usually paid by the applicant.

Landlord references: what to ask and how to confirm you're talking to a landlord

A past landlord can tell you things a report can't. Stick to facts you can act on, and ask every applicant's references the same questions:

• Did the tenant pay rent on time? How many late payments in the last 12 months?
• Did they give proper notice before leaving?
• Was the deposit returned in full, and if not, why?
• Were there any lease violations?
• Would you rent to them again?

But first, make sure you're actually talking to a landlord. Look up the property in your county's public property records and check that the owner's name matches. If the reference is a property manager, call the company's main number instead of the one on the application.

A friend posing as a landlord is a common trick, and a quick records search catches it. RentSpree's reference checks, part of the $10 add-on, email and text the landlords and employers the applicant lists and ask them to confirm or dispute what the applicant entered. It's still worth confirming the owner yourself.

If something on the application doesn't match what the report or references show, don't assume the worst. Ask the applicant about it in writing, then compare their answer to your requirements, not your impression of them.

Approve in order and put every decision in writing

Approve the first applicant who meets the your renter criteria

Review completed applications in the order they come in, and approve the first one that meets all your rental criteria. As of today, some cities, including Seattle and Portland, require this by law.

For anyone you don't approve, note which requirement they didn't meet. That note and your dated criteria are what you'd point to if a decision were ever questioned.

The notice you're required to send when you deny an applicant

If you turn down an applicant because of something in a screening report, federal law requires you to tell them. Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, this adverse action notice names the company that provided the report and explains the applicant's right to a free copy and to dispute errors. The same adverse action notice is required if you approve someone only on extra terms, like a bigger deposit or a cosigner, because of the results of the report.

Skipping it can cost you up to $1,000 per violation or more, plus the applicant's legal fees, statutory, punitive, and actual damages. When you decline an applicant in RentSpree, the adverse action notice goes out to the applicant in that same click.

Keep the tenant year after year

Turnover means lost rent while the unit sits empty, cleaning, new agent fees, and another round of screening. Keeping a good tenant is usually cheaper than finding a new one, and that's a big part of what it takes to become a successful landlord.

Today's renters expect the basics to be easy: paying rent online, getting quick answers about their lease, and reporting repairs without chasing you down. Rental tools vary a lot here. Some stop supporting you once the lease is signed, while others offer rent collection, maintenance requests, and provide answers to tenant questions.

RentSpree stays with you after move-in. You and your tenant can agree that they will pay rent online (with a $3 ACH processing fee on the free plan, waived with Landlord Pro), and Rental Assistant answers tenants' questions using their actual lease. In supported areas, it also sends repair requests to vetted local pros, with you approving every job and any quote over your spending limit.

Frequently asked questions