How to Perform Tenant Credit Checks With Ease

If you own an investment property like an apartment complex or rental home, it’s critical to screen your tenant’s credit before leasing the property to them. A credit check gives you an opportunity to look at your potential tenant’s credit history, income and employment history, residential address, debt to income ratio, and more.

Running a credit check is essential to verifying your tenant’s trustworthiness as a renter. It’s important to watch out for tenants with poor credit, a poor history of employment, or an imbalance in their debt to income ratio.

Credit checks can be performed manually, which requires pulling credit data on potential clients piece by piece. However, this can be time consuming and tedious. This is where a tenant screening api service comes in handy. Let’s take a closer look at how you can streamline your credit check process to find the best tenants for you.

1. Understand Who Your Ideal Tenant Is

Whether you manage a rental property, own one yourself, or rent out the extra room in your home, it’s essential to understand who your ideal tenant is. The basic qualifications of an acceptable tenant include the following:

• Good credit score
• Positive credit history
• Employment history for at least two years
• Low debt to income ratio
• No criminal or eviction background

There are many factors to look at when it comes to potential tenants, but making sure they pass these basic qualifications is a good place to start.

2. Receive Application and Permission from the Tenant

In order to begin your credit check journey, you must receive permission from your potential tenants and a rental application. Rental applications typically include information such as the tenant’s residential address, employment history, phone number, email address, and other personal information. You’ll also be able to see any late payments or poor payment history. This includes overdue bills, credit card use, and total debt.

Your tenants will also provide financial information in their rental application. For instance, you will see their bank account information, any mortgage or car loan amounts, credit score, and more. The rental application also includes public record information, so you’ll be able to see any evictions, employers, tax liens, and bankruptcies.

When you receive the rental application, it’s critical to receive permission from the tenant. After this, you can begin the screening process. If you’re doing this manually, you can use a permission form to get consent from your applicants. Once you have permission, you can begin the credit check!

3. Use An Automated Credit Service

After you receive the rental application and permission from your potential tenants, it’s time to run the credit check. The first

Credit Reports from all Three Bureaus

If you’re performing credit checks manually, you’ll become familiar with TransUnion, Equifax, and Experian. These are the three credit reporting agencies that offer credit reports and information so you can screen your tenants effectively.

Manually pulling data from these agencies is time consuming and tedious. Luckily, our credit reporting service does it for you! We provide accurate information from all three credit bureaus, including both soft-pull and hard-pull credit reports.

Automated Background Checks

It’s also essential to perform adequate background checks on your tenants. You should locate any criminal records, eviction reports, and any other public records to indicate your tenant’s background information.

Performing these checks manually can be tedious and add unnecessary stress to your screening process. Our service includes automated background checks so you can determine which tenants are high quality and which aren’t with ease.

Streamlined Process

Our credit services are easy to integrate into your platforms or use on our platforms. With user-friendly products and real people to help you integrate and onboard the credit service, you can enjoy a simple, streamlined process.

Easy to Understand Results

When you use our credit reporting services, you’ll be able to access accurate, easy to understand results concerning credit report, income, and history. Once you have this information, you can determine which tenants are qualified and which aren’t.

Quality Reports You can Trust

This not only streamlines the process, making credit checks much easier, it also keeps you protected as a landlord or property owner. You’ll be able to ensure your tenants will pay rent on time, take care of the property, and value your real estate investment. Enjoy peace of mind for you as a property owner or landlord when you use our credit reporting services.