The Landlord Lens - Tenant Screening Red Flags

Episode Date: January 21, 2025

Can a landlord really demand their tenant leave for the weekend? In this video, we dive into a real-life scenario and discuss tenant rights, landlord responsibilities, and what the law says about such requests. Whether you’re a landlord or tenant, knowing your rights is crucial! Watch now to stay informed and avoid potential legal pitfalls.

I'm Lexi and this is Jonathan and we're here to help you be a better landlord. Today we're talking about tenant red flags during the screening process. So why shouldn't I just trust my gut when screening my tenants? Yeah, you really shouldn't trust your gut. Your gut is not always right. You're going to zero in on things that don't matter or shouldn't matter when you're screening your tenants. So things like somebody's name or how they talk or even their appearance. Like these things really aren't that important when you're screening.

tenants you want to look at more factual things right you want to look at do they have a criminal history have they been evicted do they have a credit score do they make enough money to afford your rental gotcha so would it be a good idea for me to rent my property out to maybe a friend or family member no don't do that really okay we we talk about this a lot this was in our uh a video we posted i think it was like last week that we talked once again about renting to friends and family it gets really messy very quickly. Because friends and family, you are, if you like them, willing to bend over backwards to, you know, let things slide when probably you shouldn't. You're more apt to let small things become really big things. And then they also, sometimes, depending on the friend or family,

try to kind of get you to bend your rules. When you are renting to strangers, well-screened strangers, then you're less likely to do those things. You're more likely to stick to your processes, which you should definitely have in place. Keeping family and business separate sounds super important. That is a good idea. Yeah. So what behaviors should raise suspicion from a prospective tenant? Yeah.

So when you're screening, if an applicant says, hey, I will pay six months up front and you didn't ask for that, that's not a good sign. It's like too good to be true. It definitely is too good to be true. If they show any kind of reluctance to do a background check or to give you any information about where they were renting previously, if you are asking about their income or anything and they're getting kind of cagey,

those are red flags. You don't want to get into any of that. Also, if they are saying that they have to move in as soon as possible, but they don't give any reason why, that's also a red flag. Sometimes we hear from our users that they had applicants say they wanted to move in without even seeing the rental. There's no good reason to do that, right? I mean, even at least a video call or to see pictures or anything like that,

If they just want to immediately move in and pay you more up front than you're asking, it couldn't be a scam. Sounds suspicious. It could be. Trust your gut. On that part, none of the other parts. Okay. So what are some of the elements of a good screening report? So a good screening report, it basically has three elements.

So credit, history, criminal history, we're allowed. There are some places in the U.S. that don't allow it. But if it's allowed, always a good idea to screen for criminal history and eviction history. So eviction history, pretty self-explanatory. If somebody has been evicted, especially if it's a recent eviction, you probably don't want to move them in. And then criminal history, same thing. You know, there's obviously different crimes and different reasons for people being found guilty of these crimes. But if it's something major, like a major felony, then don't move them in.

And then credit score. You should definitely specify a minimum credit score that you're, you're, you're, going to look for when you're screening tenants. And if somebody doesn't meet that, then cut them out of the process. So why not just base it all on credit or eviction history? You really need all of it to get the entire picture, because what you're trying to do is figure out if this complete stranger is somebody who would be a good tenant. Now, it's really hard to do. Landlords out there, I'm sure there's people who are going to comment down below. You can go through your whole screening process, somebody can look awesome on paper, and then they move in, and they're like a totally different person.

But there's only so much you can control. And so up front, when you're screening people, it's important to control as much as you can, which is getting all that information, credit, criminal, eviction, maybe even doing landlord reference checks with their previous landlords and making sure you're getting that whole picture. That seems to make a lot of sense. So when I'm putting up my listing, I really don't want to go against fair housing violations. And I know it's really easy to put in specific verbiage that can violate that.

Yeah. So how can I avoid getting fined? Yes. Yeah. So this whole time we've been saying to not trust your gut, don't discriminate, make sure you're being consistent. All of those things really are ways of complying with the Fair Housing Act. Fair Housing Act is very important.

We actually made an entire self-paced course about it called Fair Housing for Landlords. We'll put the link down below. But essentially, what you need to know is that there is a federal law that dictates how you can screen four, and how, you know, certain rules you need to follow so that you're not discriminating. The easiest way to not discriminate is to set your renter criteria, your screening criteria, and stick to it. It really is that simple, but you have to actually stick to it. So what I mean by that is set realistic expectations. So if you want somebody who makes two times

or even three times the rent that you're asking per month, cool, make that one of your criteria. set a minimum credit score, you know, say they can't have any major felonies in their criminal history in the last however many years, no evictions. And then the first person that meets that criteria, move them at. Because when you start to say, oh, I don't know, it's this person or maybe this person, then you start to bend on your criteria and then it goes back to you're going with your gut, which might lead to discrimination. And breaking fair housing laws can be expensive. it can actually lead to, you know, having to close your rental business altogether. So you don't want to do that. No, definitely not.

So what's the best method to screen? Use turtinent. That's why we're here. So you can use turbo-tententent for a whole bunch of stuff. But our screening reports are truly excellent. We use transunion data. We make it very easy for you to get the information from your applicant. And then we spit you back a full screening report in just a few minutes.

And that includes credit, criminal, we're allowed. Again, it's not allowed everywhere. And then also eviction history. And also included in there, if you are a premium subscriber, you can get a cool thing called income insights, which gives you a little bit more data about an applicant's income. So it lets you know basically were they underreporting, overreporting, or were they right on when they told you their monthly income. So just another thing that can give you peace of mind. All right, Lexi, now I want to turn around on you. Yeah. Okay, you are our social media specialist. here at TurboTenant, the people may know you from our social channels. And if you don't, you should.

Follow us. Because they're great. What are your thoughts on landlords using social media to screen tenants? It's completely fine to use social media to screen your tenants, but just know that once you go down that rabbit hole, you can't unsee what you've already seen. And if you're going to do it, make sure to apply that process to every single applicant that you have. But again, you know, you're going to have to take it with a grain of salt. These are people who, Again, you are running a business with essentially. And so you might find something in their personal life that you may not agree with, but you still have to be fair and not discriminate against any of these tenants.

Yeah. And that can be really hard when looking at somebody's social feeds. Yeah. It can muddy the waters a little bit. And it can make you be a little bit biased when you don't want to be. So it's up to you. It's not technically against the rules. But I would be wary of it in general.

Yeah. Makes sense. If you out there have any other thoughts about screening or especially social media what we just ended with, leave them down below. And thanks for watching. TurboTenant is the all-in-one platform for landlords to manage their rental properties. From vacancy to tenancy, we have you covered with industry-leading tools and expert advice. Landlord better from anywhere for free at turbotenant.com.