Your goal as a rental agent is to find the best possible tenants for landlords who have vacancies to fill. It is not an easy task because screening applicants can be tricky, especially since the Fair Housing Act (FHA) prevents you from getting too personal when screening applicants. Sometimes, there is a thin line between asking simple questions and being discriminatory. Sometimes, even if you have done everything by the book, some bitter applicants who got rejected will still sue you for discrimination.
The FHA disallows landlords or rental agents to deny potential clients to rent a unit based on color, gender, race, religious belief, family status, national origin, and disability. Some screening questions and requirements might get misinterpreted as discriminatory.
Screening tenants is a vital process to weed out bad tenants from a pool of applicants and find the best tenant for a property. The process often includes:
• Income screening. The income of the applicant must be sufficient enough to afford the rent.
• Credit checking. How an applicant manages his credit can indicate whether or not they can responsibly pay rent on time.
• Criminal background check. Applicants convicted of heinous crimes that can pose a danger to other tenants
• Rental history. References of past landlords can help trace past bad tenant behavior as well as eviction history.
• Interviews. Meeting applicants face to face and having a casual conversation with them can reveal a lot about their character.
There’s no denying that screening helps rental agents find the best tenants and that the law protecting people from discrimination is necessary. However, dishonest applicants may take advantage of the FHA to help them hide their bad records or skip the screening process.
Rental agents like yourself must know how to identify fraudulent applicants and maneuver through their deception tactics during the screening process. Here are some ways:
Scan their ID or photocopy them in color
When an applicant hands you their government-issued ID (e.g., driver’s license), make sure to scan it or make a colored photocopy of it. Make sure that the photo on the ID is indeed the applicant. If you feel that the ID photo and the applicant’s face do not match, do not say anything immediately.
After making a clear copy of the applicant’s ID, you can start making casual conversation. Try to make them talk about their siblings or if they have an identical twin. There have been instances when an applicant will use the identity of his twin who doesn’t have any bad record.
Detecting such fraudulent behavior may not be easy to prove, but at least you have a copy of the ID, which may come in handy later on to prove that they provided a fake identity.
Verify the authenticity of the applicant’s references
It is common practice in the screening process to ask for an applicant’s references. Individuals who have always forged healthy relationships with their family, employers, landlords, etc., would be more than willing to give their references. References would vouch for the applicant and affirm the latter’s good behavior to help him qualify for a rental.
Positive feedback from references can take an applicant closer to getting a rental agent’s approval. That is why dishonest applicants will give you fake references. They will ask people they know to pretend to be their employer or past landlord.
However, they wouldn’t succeed with this tactic if you first verify the names and numbers of the references they will give you before calling them.
For example, if an applicant gives his manager’s direct number, try calling the company’s official number first to confirm if that is indeed the manager’s name. Once confirmed that they do, you may phone the manager at the direct number that the applicant gave. To be sure, you may call the company again and ask to speak to the manager to check if they were indeed the one you had a conversation with earlier.
Check for inconsistencies in their statements
Be attentive to inconsistencies in their statements. Not all deceptive applicants have perfected making lies. You will have multiple interactions with them throughout the processing of their rental application, with some done over the phone, email, or in person. Try to ask similar questions at different encounters, such as why they are moving, how long they have worked with their current employer, their past landlords, etc. If there are several inconsistencies, bring up your observation nonchalantly. If you catch them off guard, the truth will come out based on how they react.
Once you master how to spot fraudulent applicants, screening would be less challenging for you even if you get tons of applicants after publishing a listing on Padleads. You can syndicate your listing to popular websites, so you can expect that there will be several tenant hopefuls reaching out to you.