Screening is how you decide who may live in a property you control. It is also a fair-housing and credit-reporting exercise. Intuition is a poor system: it feels like experience and it produces uneven decisions you cannot explain when someone asks. A written standard, applied in the same order to every complete application, is slower on the first lease and cheaper than a denial you cannot reconstruct.

This is not a script for rejecting people you do not like. It is a way to separate facts you verified from impressions you did not.

The rules that exist before you write an ad

The Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. §§ 3601 and following, prohibits discrimination in housing because of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, familial status, or disability. The Department of Justice states that the Act reaches landlords and real estate companies, and also other actors whose practices make housing unavailable. States and cities add protected classes. Source of income, marital status, age, and criminal-history rules are common local additions. Look them up where the building sits. A national article cannot list your city.

Practical consequences follow from the federal list alone. Describe the unit, the rent, the term, and the criteria. Do not describe the neighbor you imagine. “Near the bus line” is a fact about the building. “Perfect for a quiet professional couple” is a preference about people, and familial status and sex are not preferences you get to advertise.

Disability includes a duty to consider reasonable accommodations, including assistance animals, even when the building has a pet rule. An assistance animal is not a pet you may bill as one. If you do not know the difference, learn it before the first request, from HUD’s fair-housing materials or from counsel, not from a comment thread.

Criminal records are not a shortcut around the Act. HUD has long warned that blanket bans can have an unjustified discriminatory effect. If your local law allows you to consider criminal history at all, an individualized look at what happened, how long ago, and whether it relates to a tenant’s obligations is safer than a slogan. Do not copy a ban from another owner’s lease.

Write the standard before the first showing

Decide in advance what you will check and what will count as a yes, a no, or a request for more information. Put it on a page you can hand to every applicant.

Income is a common line: many owners look for gross income that covers the rent with room for the rest of a household’s life. There is no federal multiplier this page can honestly quote as “the” requirement. If you use a multiple, write the multiple down, apply it to every applicant, and check whether your city limits how you use income or source of income. Count only income you verified. A letter that says someone “helps with rent” is not income until you know who pays, how often, and whether that person is on the lease.

Rental history: whether prior landlords would rent to them again, whether rent was paid, and whether they gave notice. Call a prior landlord, not only the current one. A current landlord who wants a vacancy can sound generous.

Credit and background: if you will order a consumer report, you are in the Federal Trade Commission’s landlord guidance under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. The FTC says a consumer report may include credit characteristics, rental history, or criminal history, and that you must take certain steps before you obtain the report and after you take adverse action based on it. Get a permissible purpose and the disclosures your screening company requires. Do not pull reports on people who have not applied.

Occupancy: a limit that tracks the local housing code, not a personal theory about children. Familial status is protected. A code limit on people per room is different from “no kids.”

Apply complete applications in the order you received them. First-come is a system. “I had a good feeling” is not.

Verify, then decide, then write it down

Identity: a government-issued photo ID, matched to the application. Income: pay stubs, a tax return, or an offer letter, and a call to the employer when the applicant allows it and the situation is ordinary wages. Self-employed applicants are slower. Bank deposits that do not match the stated income are a reason to ask, not a reason to invent a story.

Prior housing: dates, addresses, and a contact who is actually the landlord or the manager. Ask whether rent was on time, whether the unit was returned in fair condition, and whether they would rent again. Write down what they said and when.

If you deny, require a higher deposit, or take another adverse step because of a consumer report, the FTC says you owe an adverse-action notice. Oral notice can satisfy the statute in some cases; the FTC’s guidance says written notice is the better practice because you can prove you sent it and the applicant can dispute errors. If you used a credit score, additional score disclosures apply. Follow the screening company’s current form, and keep a copy.

Keep the applications, the criteria, and the reason for each decision for as long as your state requires, and longer if a complaint is open. Memory is not a file.

Signals that mean “verify,” not “automatic no”

Reluctance to let you call an employer or a prior landlord. Documents that contradict each other. Pressure to move in before the report comes back. An offer of several months of cash if you will skip the report. Each of those is a reason to finish the process or to decline because the application is incomplete. None of them is a protected-class shortcut. Do not upgrade a paperwork problem into a guess about who the person is.

A cosigner is a policy choice. If you allow one, write the income and credit standard for the cosigner too, and apply it evenly. A cosigner you accept only for applicants you already liked is not a policy.

After a yes

Use a lease that matches your state, name every adult who will live there, and collect the deposit within the legal limit into the account type your state requires. Walk the unit with a condition form and photos before they get the keys. Explain how rent is paid and how repairs are requested, in writing, so the first dispute is not about the channel.

The same file helps if you later hire a manager. The property-management guide covers what to demand in that contract, including who holds deposits. Screening criteria should travel with the building. A manager who applies a different unwritten standard is your fair-housing problem too.

If you are still buying, tenant files are part of diligence, not a surprise after closing. The due-diligence checklist includes estoppels, deposits, and delinquencies. The pre-offer list asks who is in the building on Friday, which is the question that decides whether you are buying a vacancy or a lease.

What this page will not do

It will not give you a score cutoff, a universal income multiple, or a criminal-history grid. Those are local legal and business choices, and a wrong grid is worse than none. Take your criteria to a lawyer who practices landlord-tenant law in the building’s jurisdiction before you publish them. The disclaimer is the site-wide version of that limit.

What you can do this week, if you already rent a unit: write the criteria on one page, check them against the federal classes and your city’s additions, and use that page on the next applicant instead of deciding at the curb.

Field notes

Screening is a fair-housing and FCRA exercise, not a vibe check. Written criteria, consistent application, adverse-action notices when you use consumer reports. Local law may limit criminal-history rules. This field note is not your attorney.

The expensive miss is usually income that is real on a PDF and gone in month two, or a roommate who is not on the lease. Criteria belong on paper before the first showing, not after you like the applicant.