Screening Baltimore County Tenants

The Fair Housing Act gives people protection against being discriminated against for reasons relating to being part of a particular group. The protected classes that fall under this act include race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status, and disability. Your screening criteria may have an unintentional bias against one of these groups. 

Some of the most common areas that landlords trip up on when it comes to fair housing laws is putting different standards in place for different types of renters. For example, you can't have a different set of requirements for a family as you would for a single person for an application approval. The required income levels and credit scores should be the same for each applicant. 

Discriminating against someone’s family status is different from denying them if the occupants would exceed the legally allowed number per size of your home (measured by bedroom amount). Discrimination in this area would be if you denied a family of four because they have three young children, but approved a group of four adults. 

You also don’t want to put any language in your rental listing that indicates a preference for a particular group. By placing a preference in your advertising, you are discriminating against the protected classes that you don’t include. 

It’s possible that your state has additional protected classes, such as sexual orientation, that you would need to keep in mind when you’re screening tenants. 

While the person's credit report provides a lot of information about someone's reliability (and we'll cover that later on in this guide), there are a few other ways to pick up on this. Keep an eye out for responsive communicators and whether they make it to the showing on time. If something happens where they need to reschedule, they will let you know as soon as possible. If possible, take a look at the condition of their car to see whether they take care of their property. If it’s filled to the brim with garbage and there are multiple problems with it, it may be an indicator of how they would treat your rental property. 

You also want to see whether the person seems laid back or high strung. High strung applicants may end up becoming high maintenance renters, blowing up your phone over every minor thing that occurs in the rental unit. Looking at their communication style is an excellent way to determine this. Are they sending multiple messages without waiting for a response, or complaining about waiting more than a few minutes for a reply? That probably won’t get better once they’re in the apartment. 

During the showing, are they paying attention to what you’re saying or on their phones the entire time? If they’re not respectful of your time, then they may have problems being courteous to your property or adhering to your rental policies. 

Sometimes they were going through a sudden job loss or divorce, which caused many financial impacts. If their recent payment history has improved, then that might have been a temporary setback. Take that into consideration, rather than just looking at the credit score alone. 

On the background checks, you’ll want to see whether an applicant has evictions on record and other problematic public records. A criminal record requires looking at precisely what happened and how long ago it occurred. Your risk tolerance on giving second chances to serious offenders should guide your decision making in this area. Some people are comfortable if a certain amount of time has passed between an offense, while others may not accept any serious criminal history. 

Give the applicant a chance to disclose the circumstances behind their record. If they fail to inform you of a criminal past or lie about it, then that’s a mark against them when you’re considering applicants. 

Paystubs and W-2s are two ways to verify income for wage-earning employees. It’s a bit more complicated for freelancers and self-employed individuals, but you can request tax returns, bank statements, or profit and loss sheets to confirm their income. For people who have an income through other sources, such as the interest from investments, child support, pensions, retirement funds, or alimony, you can request the appropriate documentation that shows how much is coming in per month. 

Do you keep running into problem tenants despite your best efforts at putting a Baltimore County tenant screening process in place? A quality Baltimore County property management company can handle the entire process for you. They have the experience and the screening procedures needed to create a quality tenant pipeline so you can keep your rental filled and your hassles minimal.