Landlords speak well of rental screen. Tim Burr, information manager for Yarmouth Properties in Washington, DC, believes that it's essential for communities to uphold their reputation.
"We're pretty tough when it comes to credit ... I don't see a lot of downsides to it, except when you take time to interview references for rental candidates, and they've moved on to other properties."
Julia Thompson's company, References-Etc.com, was founded when her father had been fired by his own company and didn't find out until later that his supervisor had given him bad references. Although rental screening is not as large a factor in her company's output as employment or reference verification, she estimates that "four or five companies a month" call her looking for data on potential renters.
Leasing agencies and landlords insist that rental screening is essential to ensure that they get the best tenants -- i.e., those who will pay rent on time, won't cause problems, and aren't hiding things like a criminal record or sporadic employment.
In the words of Larry Lick's commentary for Rental Housing On-Line, "Few other business people can appreciate the anger and despair of a landlord who discovers his investment abandoned, infested ... practically destroyed, with no hope of recovering a dime of the money owed, not even if it is the result of bad checks drawn on nonexistent accounts. His income has been instantly cut by hundreds of dollars a month."
Thompson emphasized the dangers of identity theft without proper rental screening. "A person's Social Security number is out there so much ... anyone can steal it."
Many agencies still prefer to conduct rental investigations personally. Burr's company performs individual screenings -- the representatives get on the phone and check a potential renter's job history, credit history, and rental references.
Thompson also prefers to have her organization "do it ourselves -- we call the supervisor, the ex-landlord, the works."
Both individuals emphasized the importance of having people physically call a renter's references, employers, and so on, as it reduced the chance of error and reliance on automated system screenings. Burr, however, expressed the prevailing sentiment in the rental industry when he expressed his company's interest in going "fully automated".
The majority of renting and leasing agencies have transitioned to automated rental screening systems, powered by software applications specifically designed for the industry. FAR's system, for example, is based on an intelligent data application developed by Synergy Information Systems and powered by several different Microsoft products.
The actual process of gauging an application is called "rental scoring", and is the key factor in choosing whether or not a potential applicant will be approved for a lease.
