Tenant background check in New York

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.‍

Screening tenants helps you understand who you are renting to before you sign a lease. A background check gives you a view of an applicant's credit history, criminal record, and income so you can evaluate every application against the same criteria.

If you’re renting out a property in New York, there are state-level restrictions you need to know about. For instance, you cannot deny an applicant because of a prior landlord-tenant court case, and you should not ask whether or not they have been involved in one. Many older convictions no longer show up on a background check at all. In New York City, you cannot review an applicant's criminal history until after you have made them a conditional offer.

With those restrictions in place, landlords evaluating applicants will rely more heavily on the information that is available. Credit history, verified income, and a well-written set of screening criteria carry more weight here than they do in states with fewer restrictions.

Here is what a New York tenant background check covers, the rules at each stage, and how to evaluate the results.

What a New York tenant background check includes

Tenant screening usually covers three reports: credit history, criminal history, and eviction history. You can also add income verification to confirm that an applicant earns what they say they do on their application.

New York limits two of those three reports.

Credit history

A credit report shows how an applicant has handled financial obligations over time, including open accounts, payment history, outstanding balances, and collections.

You will also see a credit score. FICO scores were designed for lending. TransUnion's ResidentScore® was built for tenant screening and gives more weight to housing-related payment behavior. RentSpree includes ResidentScore® with every screening, so you can make a more informed decision.

Criminal background check

A criminal background check searches national records, including sex offender registries, Most Wanted lists, and the OFAC watchlist, along with local criminal court records in covered jurisdictions.

New York limits what can lawfully appear in a report. Under the Clean Slate Act, eligible convictions are sealed automatically. Misdemeanors seal three years after sentencing or release, felonies after eight. Consumer reporting agencies cannot report sealed convictions. Sex offenses requiring registration and most Class A felonies are never sealed, so they continue to appear on reports regardless of how long ago they happened.

New York's courts are still working through a backlog of older records that qualify for sealing, and they have until November 2027 to finish. If an old conviction turns up on a report before then, seeing it does not mean you can act on it.

You also cannot ask about or base a decision on:

• Arrests that did not lead to a conviction
• Cases handled under New York's youthful offender rules
• Cases a court put on hold and then dismissed

RentSpree includes a background check with every screening, run through TransUnion. For a New York applicant, that search returns the national records described above, but no local criminal records, which means fewer records that you would need to evaluate against the Clean Slate rules above.

If your rental is in New York City, the Fair Chance for Housing Act adds another layer. You must evaluate the rest of the application and make a conditional offer before you review criminal history. Even then, you may only consider misdemeanors from the last three years, felonies from the last five, and convictions requiring sex offender registration. Those windows are shorter than the Clean Slate sealing periods, so a record can be unsealed and still be off-limits under the city law. RentSpree enforces this sequence by keeping the criminal report locked until you confirm the conditional offer from your dashboard.

Eviction history

In most states an eviction report shows when a landlord took a tenant to court and how the case ended. New York is an exception.

Under Real Property Law 227-f, you cannot refuse to rent to an applicant because they were part of a past or ongoing landlord-tenant court case. The law does not distinguish between the tenant who was sued and the tenant who sued, or between a case won and a case lost.

How the law is enforced is unusual. If you ask a screening company for this information, or look up court records yourself, and then turn the applicant down, the law assumes you broke it. You then have to prove that you denied the applicant for some other reason, and could face penalties of $500 to $1,000 per violation.

For this reason, eviction records are not returned for New York applications when you use RentSpree. That protects you from reviewing information that could lead the law to assume you turned an applicant down over their court history.

Income verification

Income verification confirms whether an applicant's actual income matches what they reported on their application. It does more work in New York than elsewhere, because two of the other reports are so limited.

A common approach is to ask for pay stubs or bank statements, but those have become easy to fabricate. According to the National Multifamily Housing Council, more than 93% of rental housing providers report experiencing fraud, and 84% of those have encountered falsified income documentation.

Bank-verified income pulls deposit history directly from the applicant's financial institution through Finicity, a Mastercard company, so there is no document to forge. When you add RentSpree’s income verification for $10, it shows you up to 18 months of deposit history, giving you a pattern over time that tells you more than a few pay stubs can.

How to run a compliant tenant background check in New York

Federal fair housing and consumer reporting laws impact how you request and act on screening reports. New York adds requirements at nearly every stage, and New York City adds more.

Know the fair housing rules that apply

The federal Fair Housing Act prohibits discrimination based on:

• Race
• Color
• Religion
• Sex
• National origin
• Disability
• Familial status

New York's Human Rights Law adds several more protected classes that come up during screening:

• Age
• Citizenship or immigration status
• Creed
• Sexual orientation
• Gender identity or expression
• Marital status
• Military status
• Pregnancy-related conditions
• Status as a victim of domestic violence
• Lawful source of income

Lawful source of income covers housing vouchers, public assistance, Social Security, child support, and other money that does not come from a paycheck. In most rentals you cannot turn an applicant down because of the source of their payments.

That protection is now in flux for Section 8 specifically. In March 2026, an appellate court based in Albany ruled the state law requiring landlords to accept Section 8 vouchers unconstitutional. Whether that ruling extends to New York City is disputed, and the state may appeal. New York City's own source of income protections predate the state law, cover a broader range of vouchers, and remain in effect regardless of how the Section 8 question is resolved.

Talk to a local real estate attorney before you change how you handle voucher holders.

Set your screening criteria before you list

Decide how you will evaluate applications before you start accepting them. Your tenant screening criteria might cover credit score, income-to-rent ratio, and rental history.

Written criteria are important in any state, but especially New York. Under 227-f you may have to show that a denial had nothing to do with an applicant's court history. Criteria you set in advance and applied the same way every time are what you point to.

With RentSpree, you can share your screening criteria alongside your listing details, so applicants see the requirements before they apply.

Stay within New York's $20 screening fee cap

Few states set a lower screening fee limit than New York's $20. New York law sets four obligations:

• Charge no more than the actual cost of the background check and credit check, or $20, whichever is less.
• Do not charge any other application or processing fee. Background and credit checks are the only exception.
• Waive the fee entirely if an applicant gives you their own background or credit check from the past 30 days.
• Give the applicant a copy of the report and the invoice from the company that ran it. You cannot collect the fee otherwise.

Screening through RentSpree costs $20 per applicant in New York, so it’s within the state’s limit. Applicants typically pay, and you can choose to cover it yourself instead. Some jurisdictions limit or prohibit passing screening costs to applicants, so always check your local rules.

RentSpree also offers applicants a Reusable Screening Package. For $15, added at checkout, applicants can reuse their screening report on additional applications for 30 days, up to five per day, and their application information carries over so they can reapply in a few clicks. In a market where applicants may be applying to multiple rentals at once, offering screening through a platform with a reuse option can make your listing easier to say yes to.

Get written consent before screening

You need an applicant's permission before ordering their screening reports. The federal Fair Credit Reporting Act requires written authorization and a clear disclosure that you will use a consumer report in your rental decision. RentSpree captures the required consent as part of the online application.

Leave housing court history out of your decision

Most states do not have a rule like this one, so if your application form came from a template built for another state, check it before you use it in New York.

• Do not ask about prior evictions on your application or in an interview.
• Do not request court records or rental history from a screening company or your agent.
• Do not search court records yourself.

Asking for that information and then turning someone down will cause the law to assume you broke it. That includes questions that seem reasonable, such as: "Have you ever been evicted?"

Follow the Fair Chance sequence if your rental is in New York City

If your rental is in the five boroughs, the NYC Fair Chance for Housing Act has applied since January 1, 2025. It covers landlords, brokers, managing agents, and co-op and condo boards.

That means you should evaluate everything other than criminal history first, make a conditional offer if an applicant meets your screening criteria, give the applicant the city's Fair Chance Housing Notice, and only then run a criminal background check. Running it earlier is a violation.

After that, you may consider only:

• Convictions requiring sex offender registration
• Misdemeanors from the last three years
• Felonies from the last five years

These windows are shorter than the Clean Slate sealing periods, so a record can be unsealed and still be off-limits here.

Before taking back an offer over criminal history, there are four things you need to do:

• Give the applicant every record you looked at
• Allow five business days for them to correct errors or explain the circumstances
• Weigh what they tell you
• Put in writing why the conviction matters for this rental

You are responsible for violations by a screening company you use, and if a report shows anything beyond what you may review, the law assumes you used it.

RentSpree is built to help landlords comply with the NYC Fair Chance for Housing Act. The criminal report stays locked until you have reviewed the rest of the application and confirmed the conditional offer from your dashboard, so the sequence the law requires happens automatically. You won't accidentally review criminal history before making a conditional offer, even on a busy day.

Review all reports together

Look at what you have as a whole. Federal fair housing guidance asks you to consider each applicant individually, applying the same criteria to everyone and weighing the circumstances instead of letting one number decide. A tenant screening checklist helps keep the process consistent.

Send the required denial notice

If information in a screening report leads you to deny an application, or to offer less favorable terms such as a higher deposit or a co-signer requirement, federal law requires you to send a written notice. It must:

• Identify the screening company that provided the report
• State that the company did not make the decision
• Explain the applicant's right to a free copy of the report and to dispute anything inaccurate
• Include the credit score, its source, the scoring range, and the main factors behind it, if a score contributed to your decision

Documentation carries extra weight here. Under 227-f you may have to show your denial was based on something you were allowed to consider, and in New York City a denial based on criminal history needs a written explanation specific to that applicant on top of the federal notice.

RentSpree generates the required denial notice from your dashboard, helping you stay compliant without adding a step to your to-do list.

How to evaluate your New York tenant background check results

Once the reports come back, return to the criteria you set before you listed.

What to look for in the credit report

Do not stop at the score. Look at payment history, outstanding balances, collections, and whether any problems are recent or well in the past. Since New York doesn’t restrict credit reports the way it does eviction and criminal reports, the patterns you see here might factor more heavily into your decision.

TransUnion's ResidentScore® was built for tenant screening and weighs housing-related payment behavior more heavily than a general-purpose credit score. It comes with every RentSpree screening, so the number in front of you reflects how an applicant has already handled housing payments.

What to look for in criminal records

Separate what appears on a report from what you may act on. In New York those are not the same thing, and the gap is where most mistakes happen. For any record that appears, work through these four points:

• Check how old the conviction is. If it’s a misdemeanor from more than three years ago, or a felony from more than five, you can’t consider it in your screening.
• Look at the outcome, since a charge is not a conviction and neither is a dismissed case.
• Check the New York City time limits if your rental is in the five boroughs.
• Weigh how serious and how recent something is instead of ruling out anyone with a record, which federal guidance advises against.

What to look for in income verification

Review the size and consistency of deposits over time and compare them against the income criteria you gave applicants up front. Consistency matters as much as the total; a steady pattern across 18 months tells you something a single month cannot.

If you are reviewing uploaded documents instead, compare figures across pay stubs and bank statements and look for details that do not line up. Anything inconsistent is a reason to verify further rather than accept a single document at face value.

With bank-verified income verification through RentSpree, that comparison work goes away. Deposit history arrives straight from the applicant's bank, so there is nothing to cross-check. Because the data comes directly from the financial institution, it is far more reliable than documents an applicant uploads, though you should still review the results against the criteria you set.

Screen New York tenants from application to decision

Credit history, verified income, and criteria you set in advance are the foundation of a New York screening. State and New York City restrictions limit what else you can consider, but what remains is enough to make a sound decision when you apply it consistently.

RentSpree handles those steps in one place. You can collect applications and consent, request TransUnion reports, add bank-verified income verification, and accept, conditionally accept, or deny applicants from your dashboard. The fee cap, the eviction record restriction, and the New York City conditional acceptance sequence are built into the process.

RentSpree is free for landlords and agents to use. Screening in New York costs $20 per applicant, typically paid by the applicant, though you can cover it yourself. Some jurisdictions limit or prohibit passing the fee along, so check your local rules.

Frequently asked questions