Holiday-Season Turnover: How We Suggest Landlords Screen Quickly Without Skipping Steps

Holiday tenant screening has its own rhythm. Vacancies that open in November and December sit in the slowest showing weeks of the year, applicants are traveling, employers close for days at a time, and a landlord staring at an empty unit through January is tempted to approve the first application that looks reasonable. After decades of helping landlords order tenant screening online, we have seen more regretted approvals come out of the last six weeks of the year than any other stretch. Speed is possible. Skipping steps is the mistake. Here is how we suggest separating the two. This is general information rather than legal advice; a landlord-tenant attorney can confirm the rules in your state.

Do the slow parts before the vacancy

Almost everything that makes screening slow can be done in advance. Written screening criteria, with the income ratio, credit standard, criminal and eviction rules and the documents you accept, should be finished before the listing goes live; we covered how to write them in Tenant Screening Criteria. Have the application, the authorization for a screening report and your adverse action notice template ready as files, not as things to draft at 9 p.m. when the application arrives. Set up your screening account before you need it, so the first report is a few minutes of data entry rather than a registration process. Preparation is where the speed comes from.

The steps that cannot be skipped

Under pressure, the temptation is to collapse the process into a credit score and a gut feeling. These are the steps we suggest never cutting, however fast the rest moves:

• A completed application and signed authorization from every adult who will live in the unit, not just the one who called first.

• Identity verification of each adult against the report, so the person at the showing is the person on the paperwork.

• Credit, criminal and eviction reports read in full, including dispositions and dates, rather than skimmed for a score.

• Income documents checked against each other, with a transcript or benefit letter requested when a pay stub does not add up.

• The same written criteria applied to every applicant for the unit, in the order the applications were completed.

Screening each adult separately is slower by a few minutes and avoids the worst holiday surprise, which is discovering in February that the unscreened roommate has an eviction judgment. We explained how to combine co-applicant reports in Screening Every Adult on the Lease.

Where employers and landlords are closed

Employment and rental references are the step most likely to stall between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day. Rather than waiting, ask the applicant for documents that do not depend on a person answering: recent pay stubs plus a wage and income transcript, a lease and bank records showing rent payments, or a benefit letter. Tell applicants at the showing what you will need and why, so they gather it before they apply. If a reference cannot be reached by your deadline, decide in advance whether the documents are enough or whether the application waits, and apply that rule to everyone.

Speed and fairness are the same discipline

The pressure to fill a unit is exactly when exceptions creep in: a relaxed income standard for the applicant who can move in before the holidays, a skipped eviction search for someone who seemed pleasant. HUD's fair housing guidance on screening describes applying criteria inconsistently across protected classes, such as making exceptions for some applicants but not similarly situated others, as a form of intentional discrimination (HUD guidance, pp. 6-7). The protection against that is the same thing that makes you fast: a written standard, applied in order, with the result recorded. An exception you would not make in June should not be made in December.

If the report needs a second look

A record that does not seem to match the applicant, or a collection account the applicant says is paid, should not be resolved by guessing. HUD suggests applicants be given the chance to dispute the accuracy or relevance of negative information (HUD guidance, p. 9), and under the Fair Credit Reporting Act a consumer who disputes an item with the screening company is generally entitled to a reinvestigation within 30 days (FCRA § 611). You do not have to hold the unit for that long, but you should tell the applicant plainly what the issue is and give a short, fixed window to provide a document that resolves it. That conversation takes an afternoon and prevents both a wrongful denial and a wrong approval.

Deny the right way, even in a hurry

If you turn an applicant down, raise the deposit or require a guarantor based in any part on a screening report, the Fair Credit Reporting Act requires an adverse action notice that names the screening company, states that the company did not make the decision, and explains the applicant's right to a free copy of the report and to dispute it (FTC). Send it the same day you decide. The template you prepared in November makes this a two-minute task.

Landlords can order credit, criminal and eviction reports online in minutes, pay per report with no monthly fees, and new tenant-screening customers get the $29.95 tenant package on our tenant screening page.