3: The Complete Guide to Tenant Screening for Texas Landlords

🏠 Every landlord’s nightmare begins with the wrong tenant.

In this episode of the Fort Worth Property Management Podcast, host Mason Arispe from 1st Choice Property Management breaks down the complete tenant screening process used across thousands of Fort Worth rentals — helping landlords avoid costly evictions and protect their investments.

You’ll learn:
 ✅ How to stay Fair Housing compliant
✅ What to look for in applications, credit reports, and background checks
✅ How to verify income, employment, and rental history
✅ Why consistency and documentation protect you legally
✅ The “3x rent rule” and other financial red flags to watch for

Mason also shares real-world screening examples, including how to identify risky tenants before move-in and what habits define a Tier 1 tenant.

🎧 Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts
📺 Watch the full episode on YouTube
🌐 Learn more or download our screening checklist at: https://fortworthpropertymanagement.com/tenants

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🎙️ Hosted by Mason Arispe – Operations & Business Development, 1st Choice Property Management

#FortWorthPropertyManagement #TenantScreening #TexasLandlords #RealEstateInvesting #PropertyManagementTips #1stChoicePM #FortWorthPodcast

Transcript

Mason (00:00)
Howdy friends, welcome back to another episode of the Fort Worth Property Management Podcast. This is episode three. We just got finished filming this week's episode and it is jam-packed. We're super excited for you to hear. There's a bunch of information in this one. So it's all focused around tenant screening. you're gonna hear common practices for applications.

you're going to learn what to look for in a background check.

how to read through a credit report, and then even how to verify somebody's income and employment. And so it's a jam-packed episode. We're super excited that you're here with us and tuning in for this week's episode. With that being said, let's kick it off.

Mason (00:44)
All right, welcome back to episode three of the Fort Worth Property Management Podcast. I am your host, Mason Arispe, the operations and business development manager here at First Choice Property Management. tuning in to episode three. This episode

is gonna be focused around the idea that every landlord's nightmare always begins with the wrong tenant. They've either experienced late rent, property damage, evictions, and all of it can be traced back to one thing.

poor tendon screening.

So today we're gonna dive into First Choice's full tenant screening process, what to look for, what's legally allowed, and basically how to protect your investment for the long term before the lease even starts.

At First Choice,

thousands of tenants across all of Fort Worth, we have learned exactly what separates a good tier one tenant from a risky one. And so in today's episode, we're gonna talk through fair housing laws, applications, and then we will take you through how exactly First Choice

screens each applicant whenever they submit an application for one of our properties. You'll learn all of our criteria and what exactly we look for whenever we are running the different checks on the tenants.

Now, before we get into all the details about credit checks, background checks, and stuff like that, let's take a step back and talk through why tenant screening is so important in the first place. Because here's the truth. We've all heard the horror stories of renting a property, And it's always centered around

the wrong tenant.

of the horror stories that I hear boil down to It took me six months to actually complete the eviction and once I finally evicted them, they destroyed the house. That's every horror story that you hear.

And my first question to these homeowners is always, when you screen the tenant, what exactly did you look for?

and it never fails. Majority of the time they end up saying, well, it was a friend of a friend And so we thought that we could trust them and that this would never But in reality, when you choose to rent your property you're trusting somebody else to live in one of your biggest investments of your life. I mean, think about it.

A home is typically the biggest purchase of somebody's lifetime. And now you are trusting somebody else to take care of it for you.

so, with you trusting somebody else in this property, that person's reliability should be your main focus. so with that person living in your biggest investment,

And yes, when you rent your property, this is now one of your biggest investments. So the person that you place in the house, their reliability on things like their financial habits, their respect for the property, and then even just their communication, they all determine how that investment performs.

And that's why at First Choice we don't think that when we have an empty property, even during the slow months, we should sacrifice on our tenant screening. That's not a common practice we screen tenants, it's not about just filling a vacancy. It is placing a reliable person in this property so that the investment performs well for the long term.

have a vacant property and you're looking to find that next renter, you have to shift your mindset from just filling a vacancy to just get somebody to pay the rent so I can cover the mortgage. over to I now have to find the next person who I'm trusting this investment with. first thing, you wanna,

protect your investment, you wanna protect any cashflow that you can gather through the year, and then even one of the more important parts is you have to protect your peace of mind. If you don't do the right screening, if you don't trust the person you're putting in this house,

you will not have a peace of mind for the next 12 months that they're living in that property.

So yes, the reason that tenant screening is so important is because you want to make sure that this investment performs well over time, but also that it's not costing you more money than it absolutely needs One of the biggest costs an investor will see is

an eviction, right? And that is typically the number one thing that landlords want to avoid. The average eviction here in DFW cost anywhere from about $3,500 to $7,500.

just based on how long it takes you to get them out.

And so you want to do your best to place somebody who is responsible enough and who does not want something like an eviction on their record.

So remember, when you have a vacant property, screening is not about finding a tenant to fill the vacancy. It's about finding the right tenant to take care of the property.

Let's go over the main foundation of it all, fair housing compliance. Because even with a great screening process, you can get in a lot of trouble it's not done legally and consistently with each applicant across the board.

so before you list the property on the market, before you even think about looking at an application, you need to make sure that all of your screening criteria follows one important rule. It is all fair housing compliant.

and I cannot stress this enough, if you're screening and not taking into account the fair housing guidelines, you're putting yourself into a lot of risk. Even if you don't mean to, you still are adding a lot of risk to yourself because again, we hear it from landlords every day who meet the tenant at the property and they say, I just have a gut feeling about this person. Or I know people very well, I have a good gut feeling about this person.

And in reality, that's not the best way to screen tenants, of course.

So to take a step back, what is fair housing laws? Or what does it mean to be fair housing compliant? Well,

the government passed something called the Fair Housing Act, which is a federal law that protects people from discrimination when they're seeking housing.

It says that you cannot make rental decisions like who you approve or deny based on seven specific protected classes. Those seven classes are race, color, religion, national origin, sex, familial status, and disability.

That means those seven protected classes cannot be taken into account whenever you're deciding whether to approve or deny somebody. So let me give you an example.

You cannot an applicant based on their familial status. Familial status is married, divorced, whether they have kids or not. You cannot take that into account. I've heard landlords specifically say, well, I know that this is a bigger house and it's meant for a family, but I'd really like to find a younger couple because there would just be less wear on the house.

and I have to tell them, that right there is why you probably should not be doing your own screening. you just discriminated against families which is a protected class. The others are a little bit more self-explanatory. You cannot discriminate based on race, sex, national origin, stuff like that cannot be taken into account

whenever you're deciding whether you should approve or deny an application.

And so you can see how even if you're not truly meaning to discriminate against somebody, you still can And so you wanna make sure that you know exactly what fair housing laws are and that your screening housing compliant so that you don't cause yourself any added risk necessary. You need to have set screening criteria and it needs to be consistent

across the board for any application that comes in.

And so the two most common areas can find yourself violation of fair housing laws is typically in the listing and when you choose to deny somebody. So in the listing, there are some common phrases that can be added to a listing that can be seen as a violation of fair housing laws. Like if you add something like adults only.

or perfect for young couples.

Those are both things that can be seen as a violation of fair housing laws. and then if you ever deny somebody because you had a bad feeling about them whenever you met them, you could subconsciously be discriminating and not even know it.

the important thing to know about fair housing laws is that is not put in practice to simply avoid a lawsuit.

Fair housing about fairness and professionalism across the board. No favoritism, no guessing, no inconsistency. It's fairness for every applicant who comes in. So it's extremely important that you know the ins and outs of fair housing laws. If you don't, and if you don't think it's something that you can keep up with or uphold while you're approving or denying a tenant, then

you need to contact a real estate agent or a property management company who can screen these tenants for you abide by those fair housing laws.

I think we kind of laid the foundation that it has to be fair across the board that you need to have your tenant screening criteria written down

and so now, as we're moving towards the actual screening criteria that you should implement, and then what to look for on each background check or anything that you run, you need to know what exactly to ask because if you don't ask for it, the tenant's not gonna willingly just offer up a background check, or willingly offer up their full criminal history on paper for you to look at, right?

let's start with the application process.

when it comes to the application, different applications that you can use to collect all of the tenant's information.

There's a standard Texas Realtors residential lease application, which is a paper application that they can fill out. There are a few different software's online that a lot of landlords have opted towards. there's a few different software's that are popular. One is Smart Move.

Turbo tenant.

Avail those are all a few different ones that you can check out. basically you send the tenant a link to that application and they can fill it out online. There are some that are customizable that can collect all the information that you're specifically looking for.

and then of course Zillow offers applications to their site as well. If you're planning on listing on Zillow, you can include the applications and the tenant can apply directly through Zillow.com.

one of the first things that I want you to consider is whether or not you're gonna charge an application fee. There's a lot of different philosophies behind an application fee. One side of the coin, some landlords don't charge an application fee because they want people to apply. They don't want it to cost a lot of money for somebody to apply for their property, which makes sense in theory.

However, it's not always the smartest move because if it's free, you might have a lot of unserious tenants who apply. submit the application, you start doing your screening and running the background checks. And then once you approve or ask for more information, you can't get ahold of them, And so I personally don't think a $0 application fee is a great idea.

On the other side of the coin, a lot of landlords like charging the application fee to know that the tenant is serious so that they have some kind of interest in this relationship, They're interested in the property. If you put up a little bit of your own money, then you're more willing to stick around and see it through to the approval or denial, right?

an $85 application fee and it's really just to cover the cost of the labor while screening and then the actual software that we use. that's the most common practice with landlords. Landlords sometimes even go as far to explain to the tenant, this application fee is simply to cover

the cost of the software that you're using. not taking any profit from it or anything like that. I would recommend doing an application fee of anywhere from 50 to about $100. That way when they submit the application, one, you know that they're serious, but two, now they have a little bit of interest in the property

now that they've paid $50 towards this place,

So if at some point you need to contact their employer or if you need to copy their driver's license, they're more willing to provide you any of that information because now they're a little bit more invested in this them some money up front, no application fee, they submitted it one night at 2 a.m. and forgot about it, right? So that's the idea behind it.

Also, some of the softwares online, they do cost money, So it is a way to recoup the funds from that and at least break even on the tenant screening software.

And so in regards to the application, there's a few different things that you, one, wanna make sure that the software includes, but two, you advertise to the tenants and let them know these are the things that I'm gonna be checking. And that's gonna be a background check, a criminal history search, a credit report, and then income and employment verification. You wanna make sure that the software contains all of those components, and then you wanna let the tenant know,

that this is exactly what I'm going to be screening.

so you have your application software selected. You have your application fee implemented. All that's left is you need to get an application in so that you can put it in practice, right? And so my recommendation is in order for a tenant to be able to submit the full application from you, they need to view the property first. Make sure that they either go visit the property in person or they do a virtual tour with yourself.

Like you walk through the property with them on FaceTime or something like that so that they know exactly what they're applying for. You wanna make sure they're serious and applying for that property.

Once that is done, they're ready to submit an application.

so now let's get into the actual criteria and what you're gonna be looking for in these applications. collect a few pieces of information about the tenant themself to begin.

And so right off the bat, what you wanna collect from the tenant is a copy of their driver's license and a copy of their social security card. Those two things you a multitude of things that you'll need down the line. It gives you stuff like their name, their birthday, their social security number, some of their previous living history. And so you wanna collect those two things upfront whenever they apply. So make sure and get a copy of their driver's license

copy of their social security card.

once you have that information,

are gonna be six specific checks that you run on them while running their application, okay? Those six checks are gonna be

a background check, a criminal history search, a credit report, review their previous rental history, income verification, and employment

if you review those six aspects on each applicant that you're considering, you will set yourself up for a lot more success and a lot less risk. And so we're gonna break down each of those in depth for what exactly to look for because you can run them, but we want you to be able to determine what kind of information inside each one of those checks to look for and what to avoid whenever you see

first we want to establish the baseline,

with fair housing laws to make sure that we avoid any discrimination while screening renters. however that doesn't mean that you're just required to put anybody into your property. do have the ability to deny somebody's rental application based on a few different factors,

whether that be eviction on their record.

a little bit more rough criminal history.

not paying rent at their last place that they lived. There's a few different factors that you can look at. And so we're going to jump into all of those, what to look for,

red flags, green flags, stuff like that. so in this first section, we're going to talk about background checks and criminal history reports.

So when a tenant submits their background check to you, there's four things that you specifically want to look for.

One, you want to look previous evictions on their record. Number two, any current civil judgments that they may have. identity matches the information on their social security card license. And then number four,

you want to make sure that it provides you with A full list of where they previously lived.

the first is very important, making sure that there's no previous evictions.

Of course, with having access to their previous eviction history, this will give you an immediate idea on their track record in living in rentals.

If they have an eviction on their record in the last five years, it needs to be an automatic rejection. If you accept somebody with an eviction in the last five years, you'll increase your risk significantly this will happen again.

And so you want to make sure at all.

Number two, you wanna look to see if they have any current civil judgments on their record. And what a civil judgment is, whenever a landlord or apartment complex may submit a civil claim to the courts and the tenant owes money for whatever happened.

The most common time that this happens is leaves a property with a bunch of damage and the landlord can't collect on it. So file a civil judgment on the tenant to try and recoup that money from the renter after they leave the property. And so if you see a civil judgment, one, you need to dig into it and see what happened. But two, you probably need to be a little bit more cautious with this because it could easily mean

that they caused a lot of damage to the last place that they lived.

Number three is you want to verify their identity. So everything on the background check needs to correlate exactly with what they provided to you in the full application, their driver's license and on their social security card. Because you want to make sure that the person that you're renting to is going to be the person living in the house, also rental scams are at an all-time high.

There are so many scams on, Craigslist or Facebook or whatever it is, there's just so many scams when it comes to rental property. So you want to verify that the person you're renting this house to is the person that they say that they are.

And then number four, you wanna get a full list of their previous living history, all of their last known addresses. This is important, which we'll talk through again whenever we get to previous rental history, you wanna make sure that they're not leaving a property out from their application. If they burned an old landlord or if they had a recent eviction,

or they stop paying rent at a certain property, they're gonna leave it off of the actual application, but they won't be able to take it off of their background. And if there is a property missing from the application that the tenant did not include, something happened there. You need to call that landlord or you need to ask the tenant what happened at this property. So it's important that you get that full list on the background check, okay? Now pivoting towards

the criminal history report.

When the tenant submits an application, will get a full report of any criminal activity that has happened with this tenant. I want to say it's in the past seven years.

you want to have a set criteria for denials.

the US Department of Housing Development make it very clear that you can't just do a blanket ban on anybody with a record. That's discrimination. So you can't just say no criminal record in general. Instead, you have to look at a few different things determine if you should deny based on the crime. So look for recency.

how long ago the offense happened,

look at the severity of it was it a misdemeanor or felony was it violent serious property damage or extra violent type of things you want to avoid and then relevance

that directly affect the credibility of the renter who's gonna be living in the property? Someone with a 15-year-old non-violent misdemeanor is a lot different than somebody with a one-year-old recent property damage conviction.

Of course, the one with the recent property conviction you want to stay away from and deny, because if they're not taking care of other people's property, it's pretty much certain they're not gonna take care of yours. However, the 15-year-old non-violent misdemeanor, you might overlook that, because who knows the type of person they were 15 years ago? A is arguably one of the smaller crimes that you can get.

that may not directly affect the person they are now and them taking care of your rental property. And so those are a few things that you wanna look for for a full list of the crimes that First Choice does not allow. at fortworthpropertymanagement.com / tenants. To give you a few examples, First Choice automatically denies

any major felonies, things like manslaughter, murder, organized crime, stuff like that, and then any recent property convictions, arson, destruction of property, burglary, all of those things are telltale signs that this person does not respect other people's items, they're not gonna respect yours, things that First Choice denies on.

but you want to have these written down so that you can use that as a while you're screening this criminal history report so that emotions stay out of it and so that you have a plan for if you do end up seeing something on criminal history report.

Mason (21:09)
And of course, it's extremely important consistency application that you receive.

and you want to apply the same criteria across the board.

And just keep in mind, your goal is not perfection. You will never find the absolute perfect tenant, but it's risk management. You wanna lower your risk as much as possible. And so now that you've looked at the background check and criminal history report, let's move on to the credit report and what the credit report actually tells you and how to read it between the lines.

All right, so in this next section, We're gonna pivot towards analyzing their credit report. And so keep in mind, you wanna receive, an application, but especially a credit report from everybody applying. That'll be anybody 18 years or older who's gonna be living in the property,

the very first thing that you wanna look for is the credit score. The credit score is gonna be your biggest indication of the current status of their credit. The higher the number, the better credit they have.

The lower the number, the more risky they may be.

600 and up is traditionally considered pretty good. is more risky and then below 500 should automatically be a denial. this will vary based on every landlord and you can put a restriction for what you want for your particular tenant.

That's the first key indicator that you look for is the credit score.

The credit report gives you insight into their financial behavior, how they treat other payments, how they pay on time.

and different things like that. So

want to looking for any automatic denials. This will be things like bankruptcies.

any liens, extremely low credit scores.

or no credit, just a flat out zero credit score. Any of those will be an automatic denial. So you wanna start with looking for those. After that, the biggest thing is that you wanna look for patterns. Like I mentioned, this credit report gives you an insight into their financial behavior, how they treat their finances, and so you wanna look for a pattern. Are the payments made on time?

Is there a history of late or missed payments? Is that a common theme in their financial behavior? Are the credit cards maxed out? Are they living way beyond their means? And if so, are they gonna be able to afford the house? Have they gone through And especially, do they owe any money to previous landlords or utility companies? These are all things that you wanna consider whenever you're looking

at the credit

because it's a key of the behavior that they're gonna have towards their rental payment.

If they owe a previous landlord, they're gonna end up owing you.

if there's a history of late payments, that it's not so far-fetched to say that they may end up paying rent to you late.

important thing is to take both the credit score and the patterns that you find in their financial analyze them both together. Because don't want to automatically deny somebody just because of their credit score. Sometimes life happens. There's medical debt, divorces.

There's a lot of things that can lead somebody to lower credit score doesn't automatically make them a bad tenant. a few big red flags like the bankruptcies or like owing previous landlord's money. Those you just stay away from. But it doesn't have to be a hard line in the sand to where if their credit score is below 650, automatic denial. You want to take into the stuff

on their credit report as well to determine if it is a good tenant.

What first choice looks for is everything I described and then we look for effort and consistency. So if the credit report shows a steady climb that they've just recently recovered from some debts, they're responsible and they're making their payments on time, it may still be a tenant that we consider even if their credit score is a bit lower than we like to see. Of course, we still have a company-wide common practice that if it's below 500,

It's an automatic rejection. But anything above that can still be considered as long as we dig into their credit report and don't see any other major red flags.

So to recap the credit report, when you receive it, look at the credit score at face value, determine if it's something that you find credible, and then of course, dig into the different aspects of the credit report. Look at the amount of debt, look at if the payments are made on time or not,

at their overall credit usage. Are their credit cards maxed out? And then specifically look for any bankruptcies, any money owed to previous landlords, any liens.

And so to sum it all up, take a look at the credit score at face value. Make sure it's within your limit of allowable credit scores. And then two, move on to their pattern behavior on their actual credit

Verify that their payments are made on time. See if they have any late or missed payments, Look at their credit utilization rate. Are they maxing out their credit cards? And then of course, have your automatic rejections. Like if you see a bankruptcy, if you see a lien, if you see money owed to a previous landlord.

or if their credit score is under that threshold, those are your automatic rejections, go ahead and deny the application based on that thing. And so that's what you wanna look for when looking at the credit report. Again, please keep in mind credit

is a big indicator to understand their financial behavior, but it is not an end all be all. It is one of the legs that you want to consider. That is financial behavior end of it. The other end of it

you want to know exactly how somebody's going to treat the property while they're living in it. So to get an idea on that, the biggest key indicator of how they'll treat the property is how they treated their last one. And so that brings us to rental history verification.

So if you take nothing else from this episode, take this.

Rental history is one of the best, if not the best indicator of future behavior.

The choice requires that every applicant have previous rental history, so they've lived in a rental before, so that we can call the old landlord and verify that they were a good reputable tenant.

This is a requirement of ours across the board. And so we end up losing out on a lot of students, a lot of younger renters, which we are completely fine with. We still don't struggle to find tenants, but we do make it a requirement

We make one exception, only one exception to this rule, and it's that you're still eligible if you've owned a home for five years and made your mortgage payments on that property. That we understand. Sometimes you're moving out of state, made your mortgage payments, and you don't wanna buy immediately when you move in. So we understand that.

However, rental history is the biggest indicator that you'll get of this tenant's future behavior. And so when we verify rental history, we're looking for four things. Payment history, did they pay rent on time every month? Property condition, did they leave the house in good shape?

lease compliance. Any lease violations, any noise complaints, any problems through the time that they live there? And then number four is proper notice. Did they notify the landlord that they were moving?

Did they follow the lease terms when they moved out or did they just abruptly leave? Okay, so that is what we're looking for when verifying previous rental history.

And so you wanna verify these four things with every single applicant. And then pro tip, always call the previous one, not just the current one.

because the current landlord, they're a bad renter, they'll say just about anything to get them out of the house. But the one before they've got no interest in this. If they were a bad renter,

They will flat out tell you the truth and steer you clear of a big headache. And so that's a pro tip for you. Always call the previous landlord and the current one. Don't just take the current one's word for it. You wanna call as many as you get. at the beginning when we were running background checks, you may have heard me mention to make sure and get a full list.

of their previous known addresses. The reason for this is because whenever you're verifying their rental history, you wanna make sure every reference for their previous landlords the address that they provided to you as well.

if on the application you have three previous rental properties, but on their background check you see four, you need to look at that one property that's missing. And that's the landlord you need to call because there could something that the tenant specifically left off the application they didn't want you to find. So it's very important to gather that full list of their last known addresses.

compare it to the rental history verification on their application and call those landlords. If you find five previous landlords, call five previous landlords. That is the biggest distinction between.

a lot of risk and a little. the good screeners will actually take the time to call all the landlords. If you don't call the you could add a lot of risk to your plate by allowing that tenant in. If they're giving you the information, you need to capitalize on it and make those calls to those landlords.

So just keep that in mind, are verifying their previous rental history. Call each landlord, ask them those four things that I mentioned. You wanna make sure that they paid rent on time every month, you wanna verify how they left the house.

the biggest indicator of how a tenant will treat your property is how they treated the last one.

So please verify with as many landlords as you can. to require two landlords to be called.

So now that you've verified that their background is clean, no major crimes, they have good financial behavior.

and they know how to treat a rental property, the last piece of the puzzle is just making sure that they can afford it. So in the next section, we'll talk about income and employment verification.

end of the day, even the nicest, most responsible applicant has to be able to afford the rent. And that's where verifying the income and employment comes in.

the industry standard for the required income is pretty simple. The tenant's income should be three times the monthly rent in order to qualify for the house.

That means if you're renting your house for $2,000 a month, the tenant pre-tax should be making $6,000 a month at a minimum.

Now this is not a hard law. Some landlords require less, some landlords require more, but it is a very solid guideline that ensures that a tenant can pay while still covering other expenses. In the example that I used, if you rent your house at 2,000,

and the tenant makes $6,000, that leaves them, hypothetically, $4,000 left throughout the month to use for other expenses. Because keep in mind, the tenant will have your rental payment, and then they typically have another $400 or $500 a month in utilities, like electricity, water, gas, security system, all of that adds up, and want to make sure

that the tenant is able to afford your rental payment plus everything else that they're gonna be paying for. You need to take that into account. Just because a tenant makes higher than your rental payment doesn't mean that they can afford it. and so three times the monthly rent is a great guideline to use to tell if a can afford that rental payment or not.

And so how can you verify these type of things?

So right off the bat, I would ask for two or three recent pay stubs, their most previous tax return, and then even their most recent bank statements. I would compare all three of those and verify that this tenant makes three times the monthly rent. If they're self-employed, you may need to do a little bit more digging. Tax returns,

bank statements, even business bank accounts can be a pretty big indicator of how much income that self-employed person makes.

If they're moving to your town, you may want to gather the offer letter signed by the employer to confirm their future income that they're gonna have once they make the move down here. That one's a little bit more risky, so if you can find somebody with reputable income and not just an offer letter, you'd probably prefer that.

And then the second part of this is after you have all that, you need to verify with their employer. Pay stubs can be altered online, shoot, AI can generate just about anything for you now. So you need to make sure and gather their employer's information, and then again, it's gonna take some legwork. You need to make the calls to the employer and verify what their pay is, or at least verify that

they've been semi-vested there, they've had their job for a little while, and then these pay stubs are accurate. some employers may be willing to share what exactly they make, some may just verify the documents that you have on hand that they were not altered. And so you wanna call the employer, get as much information as you can, and verify that the documents that they gave to you were legitimate and not altered in any way.

Meanwhile, while you're on the phone with the employer, verify that they're still in good standing, ask about how long they've been in the company and different things like that, and then take a step back and look at their full employment history. lot of gaps or if you see a lot of inconsistency it might be a sign of instability, that they don't stay at jobs for a long period of time.

In turn, means that they lose out on income frequently throughout the year, which would not be a good thing for you as the landlord. So you wanna look at both of those things. Of course, if they've been at their employer for a little while, call, make sure that they're still in good standing, and then verify the income.

Even recent job promotion, a recent relocation, both could actually be a positive sign that they're good workers and their employer trusts them to give them those promotions or relocations. By no means are we looking for the richest possible applicant, but we are looking for somebody with long-lasting, reliable income and steady habits.

If you have those, you'll find yourself a good renter. Pair that with somebody who has previously taken care of a property and left it in good condition. You have yourself a great renter.

Once you verify the income and employment and you feel good about it, you've got one of the biggest boxes checked off

And if everything pans out, no more other major red flags, then I would say you're about 95 % a shoo-in to approve this applicant.

Mason (34:57)
and so now that we've talked about all the puzzle pieces it takes to find a tier one tenant, we need to talk about how it fits together, the best tenant screening, it's not about being perfect, but it's about being consistent and thorough with each applicant.

You need to build yourself a system so that when that first application comes in, you're ready to roll. You don't want to wait until the very last minute and then you just try and figure it out whenever that first application comes in. You need to be prepared

what your system should include. Number one, fair housing compliance. Every applicant gets treated equally, no exceptions. Number two, transparent application process. Clearly define how much it costs, what you're gonna gather, and how long it's gonna take to approve or deny.

Number three, look at their background checks and criminal history.

Dig in deep and clearly define what is an automatic rejection and what is not.

Of course, look at their score, but more importantly, look at the patterns on their report.

and identify any major red flags. Number five, rental history. It's the strongest predictor of future behavior. Sit down and call as many old landlords as you can.

income and employment verification. You need to make sure that they make three times a monthly rent in order to qualify for the property.

Call their employer, verify that everything is legitimate, and make sure that they can afford the house that they're applying for.

Each one of those steps is necessary when screening a renter.

Nobody's ever regretted spending extra time screening a renter.

So time that you need to verify that they're a solid renter.

write all of these steps down and make sure that you have a solid, written, repeatable process. It'll help you make better decision over the long run.

And always remember, tenant screening is where your investment is either protected or put at a risk. It is arguably the most important part about renting your property. A good tenant doesn't just pay rent on time every you as the homeowner, and they protect the condition of the property.

So take the extra time to do it right or partner with a professional who already has the process perfected.

Phew, all right, shoot, we just covered a lot. if you forgot the entire episode, just remember this one thing. Tenant screening is where your investment is either protected or put at risk.

finding a renter doesn't mean just filling a vacancy. It also means protecting your property in the long run.

So this process is something that we have refined over 35 years of managing properties.

Every application that comes through our door goes through the exact same checklist that I just described to you. No shortcuts, no favoritism, no guessing.

the average time that it takes us to screen an applicant is about two to three business days.

We do have all of this info written on our website as well. It's at fortworthpropertymanagement.com / tenants. Yes, we do advertise all of this to every tenant who goes to our website or

We really appreciate you tuning in to episode three of the Fort Worth Property Management Podcast. please make sure that you download this episode, follow the show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or even on YouTube. Make sure you like and subscribe.

We're gonna continue to put out great content like this, talking about the ins and outs of property management, how to be a good DIY landlord, and then of course we're gonna talk about great questions to ask property management partners in the event that you wanna sign up with a management company. So we got a good slate of content coming out for you guys.

If you need an outline of our tenant screening, if you have any questions or maybe you've had your run of bad luck with tenants, reach out to us at fortworthpropertymanagement.com. We'd be happy to help.

and that'll do it for the third episode of the Fort Worth Property Management Podcast. Thank you so much for tuning this week.

Make sure you like the podcast and follow us on social media so that you're alerted every single time we upload a new YouTube video. We implemented last week that We're gonna be posting bi-weekly on every Wednesday, so you should get an alert that a new episode comes out every two weeks

Feel free to ask any questions in the comments below. We will be checking all comments every day. We really appreciate you tuning in. We hope you enjoyed this episode. I am Mason, your host of the Fort Worth Property Management Podcast, here with First Choice Property Management. Thank you so much for tuning in. Have a great rest of your day.