What is Tenant Screening?
Tenant screening is the process of evaluating prospective renters against credit, income, eviction history, and reference checks before signing a lease. Rigorous screening is the single highest-leverage activity in landlord operations — bad tenants destroy returns, good tenants compound them.
A standard screen pulls: full credit report and score, criminal background, eviction history (most important), employment verification (typically 3x monthly rent in gross income), and references from the two prior landlords. Cost: $35-60 per applicant, almost always paid by the applicant via an application fee.
The screening rules every landlord should set in writing before fielding applications: credit score floor (typically 620-680), income floor (3x rent), no prior evictions, no violent felonies in the last 7 years. Document the rules and apply them consistently — fair housing law requires it.
An eviction costs $3,000-7,000 and 60-120 days of lost rent. Screening saves an order of magnitude more than it costs. The investors who get burned by tenants almost universally either skipped screening or rationalized exceptions to their own rules.
Concepts that connect.
Property management is the third-party service of leasing, collecting rent, handling repairs, and managing tenant relationships on a landlord's behalf. Typical cost in 2026: 8-10% of monthly rent collected, plus a leasing fee of 50-100% of one month's rent on new tenants.
The Fair Housing Act is the federal law prohibiting discrimination in renting, selling, or financing housing based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, familial status, or disability. State and local laws often add protected classes (source of income, sexual orientation, age).
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