How to Run a Credit Check on a Tenant: A Landlord's Guide

A tenant credit check comes down to four moves: get the applicant’s written OK, pull their credit with a service built for it, read the payment history before you look at the score, and send a proper notice if what you saw led you to say no. The whole thing can take less time than the showing.

Most landlords who get into trouble with a tenant credit check don’t get in trouble for the pull itself. They get in trouble for skipping the consent step, applying criteria to one applicant and not another, or quietly rejecting someone without the notice federal law requires. So this guide spends as much time on those parts as on reading the report.

Step one: get the applicant’s OK in writing

The Fair Credit Reporting Act lets you see a consumer’s credit report only with a permissible purpose under 15 U.S.C. § 1681b. A rental application counts, because the applicant started a business transaction with you. Still, the cleanest footing is a signed authorization, and it costs you nothing to collect.

Put one sentence on your rental application, above the signature line, something like: “I authorize [Landlord or Company] to obtain my credit report and credit score to evaluate this rental application.” Keep the signed copy with the application. A texted “yes, go ahead” works too if you save the thread. We wrote a longer piece on getting written consent for a credit check with a template you can copy.

One practical tip: ask for consent and the phone number on the same form. Our lookup only needs a U.S. phone number to find the applicant’s TransUnion file, so once you have the signed application you have everything you need.

What a tenant credit check actually shows (and what it doesn’t)

People use “credit check” to mean three different things, and it helps to know which one you’re buying.

A credit report is the raw file: accounts, balances, payment history, collections, inquiries. A credit score is a number a model computes from that file. A tenant screening report is a bundle a screening company assembles, which may include credit, eviction court records, criminal history and a pass/fail recommendation. The CFPB has a good plain-English explainer on tenant screening reports if you want the consumer’s side of it. (For the difference between the first two, see credit report vs. credit score.)

When you look up an applicant with us, you get their name and current address from their credit file, their real FICO® Score 4 calculated by FICO from TransUnion data, and a profile summary: total debt, how much of their available credit they’re using, their on-time payment record, and the factors holding the score back. You also get phone details, which matter more than you’d think in rental fraud. More on that below.

What you won’t find on a credit report:

• Evictions. Those live in court records. A credit report may show a collection for unpaid rent, but the eviction case itself won’t appear.
• Civil judgments and tax liens. The three bureaus stopped including nearly all of them in 2017 and 2018.
• Income. Verify it with pay stubs, offer letters or bank statements.
• Rent history, unless the applicant’s past landlord or a rent-reporting service sent it to the bureaus. Many don’t.

So the credit check answers one question well: how does this person handle the bills they already have? Pair it with a call to the last landlord and you’ve covered most of what matters.

Running the tenant credit check, start to finish

A worked example makes it concrete. Say you’ve got a two-bedroom at $1,650 a month and an applicant named Marisol Ortega. She’s filled out your application, signed the credit authorization and listed her cell as (555) 555-0142.

1. Confirm the application is complete before you pull anything. Income, employer, prior addresses, signed authorization. Pulling credit on a half-finished application wastes your money and invites inconsistency.
2. Run the lookup. Enter (555) 555-0142. It’s a soft pull, not a hard pull, so Marisol’s score isn’t touched. Results come back in seconds.
3. Check that the identity lines up. Does the name on the credit file match the name on the application? Is the current address the one she listed? Is the phone a mobile line registered to her, or a VoIP number with a high fraud score? A mismatch isn’t automatically disqualifying (people move, people share phone plans), but it’s a reason to ask.
4. Read the payment history before the score. More on this next.
5. Write down what you saw and what you decided, in a line or two, and file it with the application. If your decision is ever questioned, notes made at the time are worth a lot.

If nothing comes back, you’ll see why: no credit file tied to that number, a frozen file, or a history too new for FICO to score. A frozen file just means the applicant needs to lift the freeze with TransUnion before you try again.

How to read the score without overreacting

FICO Score 4 runs from 300 to 850. FICO’s general bands are 580 to 669 for fair, 670 to 739 for good, 740 to 799 for very good and 800 or more for exceptional. Those labels are useful, but a landlord shouldn’t treat them like a lender’s rate sheet. You’re not pricing a 30-year mortgage. You’re predicting whether rent shows up on the first of the month.

So read the profile in this order:

Recent late payments. A 30-day late from four years ago during a job loss tells you much less than three lates in the past year. Look at the timing and the pattern, not just the count.

Collections. Unpaid utility or rent collections are the biggest red flag on a rental application, because they’re the exact behavior you’re trying to avoid. A medical collection tells you something different. (For what else to watch, see our list of rental application red flags.)

Credit usage. Someone using 90% of their available credit has very little room if the car breaks down. Someone at 15% has a cushion.

Total debt against income. A $640 car payment plus $300 in card minimums on a $4,800 monthly income changes the math on a $1,650 rent.

Then look at the score. If the profile tells a story, the score should match it. If the score looks low but the only problem is a short history, you may be looking at a young applicant with a thin credit file, not a risky one.

A word on why we use FICO Score 4: it’s the TransUnion score mortgage lenders pull, and it’s a long-established model. It won’t match the number your applicant sees in a free app, which usually shows a VantageScore 3.0. Different model, different number. If an applicant asks, our page on why we use FICO Score 4 explains it in a minute. And if you want benchmarks for setting a cutoff, read what credit score you need to rent an apartment.

Set your criteria before you see anyone’s report

Honestly, this is the step most small landlords skip, and it’s the one that protects you most.

Write down your standards in advance and apply them to every applicant for that unit. Something like: income at least 2.5 times rent, no unpaid rental or utility collections, no more than two 30-day lates in the past 12 months, and a FICO Score 4 of 600 or higher, or a qualified co-signer if not. Your numbers can be different. What matters is that they exist on paper before the first application arrives.

The Fair Housing Act bars discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, familial status and disability, and many states add more protected classes. Applying different credit standards to different applicants is one of the easiest ways to end up with a complaint, even if you never meant anything by it. Written criteria, applied the same way every time, are your best defense.

Some states and cities also regulate how you can use credit in rental decisions, especially for applicants with housing vouchers. Check your local rules. This is general information, not legal advice for your situation.

If the answer is no

If you deny an applicant, require a co-signer, ask for a bigger deposit, or charge higher rent because of something in their credit, the FCRA requires an adverse action notice under 15 U.S.C. § 1681m. It applies even if credit was just one factor among several.

The notice has to:

• say the decision was based in whole or in part on information in a consumer report,
• name the consumer reporting agency (for our lookups, that’s TransUnion) with its address and phone number,
• state that the agency didn’t make the decision and can’t explain why it was made,
• tell the applicant they can get a free copy of their report if they ask within 60 days, and can dispute anything inaccurate,
• and, because a credit score was used, disclose the score along with the key factors that hurt it.

That last item surprises a lot of landlords. Our results list the factors holding the score back, so you’ll have what you need. We walk through a sample in adverse action notices for landlords.

Send it in writing. Email is fine if the applicant gave you an email address. Keep a copy.

Afterward: store it safely, then shred it

A credit report is sensitive, and the FTC’s Disposal Rule at 16 CFR Part 682 requires anyone who uses consumer reports to dispose of them in a way that protects against unauthorized access. In practice: don’t leave printouts in the leasing office, don’t forward reports to your personal email, and shred or securely delete them once you no longer need them for the application or your records.

Keep your notes and the signed authorization. Those are the documents that answer questions later.

A few situations that come up a lot

Couples and roommates. Run a tenant credit check on every adult who’ll sign the lease, each with their own consent. Don’t average two scores together without a written policy that says you will.

The applicant who wants to bring their own report. Some states, like Washington, have rules about accepting portable screening reports. Elsewhere it’s your choice. A report the applicant hands you can’t be verified the way a fresh pull can, so many landlords still run their own.

Renewals. Rechecking an existing tenant’s credit at renewal is generally treated as reviewing an existing account, though the cleanest route is still to ask for a fresh OK. Most landlords find that a year of on-time rent tells them more than any score.

Pre-screening before showings. If you get a flood of inquiries, it can make sense to check credit before you spend an afternoon showing the unit, with the prospect’s OK. Our guide to pre-screening rental leads before the showing covers how to do that politely.

One last piece of advice for any landlord: the credit check is a tool for asking better questions, not a vending machine for yes and no. When something in the file surprises you, ask the applicant about it. The answers are often more useful than the number. Our compliance page has the short version of the rules if you want to keep it bookmarked, and the how it works page shows exactly what comes back from a lookup.