I can't say enough about how much time the pre-screening techniques I learned here have saved me. This is someone looking for a room who contacted me on FB Marketplace:

Applicant: I am very interested and can move in tomorrow.

Me: We have units available but it is unlikely that you will be able to move in that soon. We screen background thoroughly. Still interested?

Applicant: yes I will have cash in hand to move in

Me: Everyone has to pay, so that is not the sole qualification. Please answer the following pre-screening questions to set up a showing for the room:.1) Where do you work? 2) How long have you been with your employer? 3) How much is your weekly pay and do you have paystubs to document? 4) Do you have any misdemeanors or felony convictions? 5) What is your full name (last, first and middle initial)? 6) When are you looking to move?

Applicant: you're not serious about renting this room out, I would be more then happy to have a face to face conversation about my background.

Me: Answers to the questions will tell me what I need to know. I understand if you don't wish to answer however. Best wishes in your search.

Applicant: I don't trust putting my info on this forum. if you want to have a conversation in person I would be more then happy to give you all of this info. I don't know if you are a person fishing for information (mind you, it's he that contacted me, not the other way around).

Me: That's fine. Thanks for your interest

The problem was that he couldn't answer the questions to my satisfaction and wanted to establish his own rental criteria with "cash in hand" and a "story".

Here's another one, I'm starting to get pleasure out of messing with these people a bit:

Applicant responding to pre-screen questions: Thank you Sir . I work with XXXXX Rehabilitation at XXXX. I have been with this Employer one year and Ten months. I will be two years on April 4/10/19. I get paid every two weeks. My Average pay is 1400 dollars. I have no felony, conviction or misdemeanor. My full names are DorisXXXXX. Thank you.

Me after running her name on PA Courts: Unfortunately, you do not meet our rental criteria due to prior evictions and landlord/tenant cases. Sorry.

Applicant: I don't know of any Eviction on my record l will have to run my credit

At this point I text her links to three LL/Tenant cases. Two were brought by the same LL.

Applicant: I am sorry l have to look at this and find out what is going with my record. I am not aware of any Eviction.

Me: Each of these landlord/tenant actions would have required a court appearance by you as well as a discussion with your landlord about your past due rent. So you would have definitely known about this. In one case, possession was awarded. Problems paying rent in the with past landlords will certainly mean problems with future landlords. Public records are available and many landlords use them and most will not rent to people with evictions or LL/Tenant cases. The few who will have crap places. Best of luck in your search.

Cash in hand! Why is that always such a big deal? (NOT!) Do they really think we rent places to people who DON'T have the money to pay?

GKARL,

Nice, you're getting this down.

I too used to get some pleasure from the "back 'n forth" with the obviously unqualified, but even that got tiring after a while. Like NE said, they are just copies of the same old sob story. After you hear 50 people "explain" about how it wasn't their fault they got evicted, or didn't know they got evicted, or we're going to "clear this up with the LL", it just gets boring.

Have some fun, but don't waste too much time.

My process is streamlined to handle the 10-15 inquiries per day per vacancy I get. They follow the process or not. I don't argue and if they do not do what I ask then I simply stop responding. They either answer my questions and we go to the next step, or they don't and I ignore them.

Your 1st person, I would have stopped reading after "you're not serious about renting this room out". Uncooperative and rude. NEXT!

Your 2nd person, after I found her evictions there would be no more contact. Simply block the phone#/block messenger profile. NEXT!

I would like to come up with a snappy response for "I've got cash in hand...." Maybe something like, "So does my bounty hunter." Just to let them know what kind of a person they're dealing with in me....

;-)

It amazes me how many mom and pops still don't do background checks and love hearing cash in hand. That's why burned out landlords make great motivated sellers!

OH wow, WMH you got me this morning, now cleaning g juice off my keyboard.

Once I have declined, I don’t give any more information, I end the conversation. In my state, I am not required to give the tenant the reason, other than Fair Credit reporting. I do have a written criteria, with the date it was established, and I make sure I use the same criteria for all applicants, so, those bases are covered. Any more conversation than, ‘ I’m sorry, I will not be able to offer you the rental at this time,’ just seems to feed the mentality that landlords are ‘the problem’. So people just want to argue to get their way in life, I decline to participate. (Unless in an online landlord forum *grins*.)

Just a little caution about criminal history questions. Keep a close eye on that with regards to state and federal laws. Those types of inquiries are getting a lot of attention by different states, and at federal agency levels. I thought another state just implemented ‘Ban the Box’ laws.

I'd be just a little bit cautious about criminal and eviction checks online unless you have a way to link the applicant to the record so you know it is the same person.

If I look up my own name online, I come up with a dozen people who have the same name as me but that aren't me. Fortunately, they are all highly regarded professionals and no one is a criminal.

Oregon:

Both of these folks had unique names. Where there's a common name, I request a birthdate. The court records provide a birthdate so I can match. Usually, I don't have to even take it that far as I have the middle initial and can determine if it's them from that or the county where the trial was held.

"...folks like this would have been running me ragged with showings and now I run around a lot less and screen from the comfort of home or office. I have far less showings, but the one's I have are solid. I have filtered out a lot of people. I've lost count. There are a ton of bad applicants out there."

Ain't that the truth!

Now,just hit "Delete".

Good Job GKARL.

Thank you for sharing your experience.

I’ve been trying to use prescreening questions. At times I get no response and others some folks move on. I question if my list is to long for folks to feel comfortable answering. I do believe it needs to be a balanced a bit during this part of the process. I have found if I ask the questions one at a time I get a better response rate in comparison to listing them all upfront. Any feedback is welcome to my presecreening questions:

Please let me know the following information and we can set up a showing.

Name

Number of people?

Reason for moving?

Current rent

Number of late payments

Type of employment for each adult

Approximate Credit score for each adult

Any Evictions/foreclosures

Any arrest/criminal charges?

Type of pets

Monthly income

Monthly debt

Any other information you wish to share about your housing needs

Thank you,

Dan

My questions are for a room in a rooming house. For an apartment I use:

Please answer the following pre-screening questions to set up a showing: 1) Where do you work? 2) How long have you been with your employer? 3) How much is your weekly pay and do you have paystubs to document? 4) Do you have any misdemeanors or felony convictions? 5) What are the full names of proposed occupants over 18 (last, first and middle initial)? 6) When are you looking to move? 7) Describe any animals you have

Please note that all information is verified and not fully answering questions or answering them falsely will disqualify the applicant.

Great thread! Saved me a lot of time and headache already on showing a unit. I get calls on google voice or emails and send them the canned response - please describe your pets (breed Pitbull?) your job, your roomates and any felony, misdemeanor convictions or evictions and when you want to move in. About half don't respond - evictees and criminals self screen at that point, saving me the hassle of rejecting them.

Isn’t it amazing how people don’t know about an eviction? I had one of those a month ago. She claimed “I wasn’t supposed to be on that, I was just staying there with my BF, not on the lease. I don’t understand why my name is in that.”