How to Screen Tenants: A Landlord's Step-by-Step Guide

The tenant you choose will live in your property for a year or more, pay most of your return, and either protect the place or wear it down. Screening is how you improve the odds — not a guarantee, but the single biggest lever you have between "a great year" and "an eviction and a repaint." The goal is a process you run the same way for every applicant, so your decisions are consistent, defensible, and based on facts rather than first impressions.

Start with a written process, applied the same way every time

Before you look at a single applicant, decide how you will evaluate all of them. Two reasons: consistency finds better tenants, and it keeps you on the right side of fair-housing law.

The federal Fair Housing Act prohibits treating applicants differently based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex (including sexual orientation and gender identity), familial status, or disability. The safest way to stay compliant is to write down your criteria in advance and apply them identically to everyone — same income threshold, same credit standard, same background rules, same questions. When every applicant clears the same bar, you are judging the application, not the person.

Write your standards down and keep them where you can hand them to an applicant who asks. "Everyone is screened against the same written criteria" is both good practice and a strong answer if a rejected applicant ever questions the decision.

Set your criteria before you advertise

Decide the bar first, so you are not tempted to move it for someone you happened to like. A common, reasonable set:

• Income: gross monthly income of roughly 3x the rent. On a $1,500 rental, that points to about $4,500 a month.
• Credit: a minimum score, or simply "no unpaid judgments, no prior evictions, no landlord debt in collections." Pick a standard you can state plainly.
• Rental history: a track record of on-time payment and no lease violations, verified with prior landlords.
• Background: your rule on criminal history — apply it narrowly and individually rather than as a blanket ban, which fair-housing guidance discourages.

Put these in the listing itself. Stating your standards up front means applicants who cannot meet them often self-select out, saving everyone the application fee and the time.

Collect a complete application

Use the same written application for everyone. At minimum, collect legal name, date of birth, and Social Security number (needed to run credit and background checks with the applicant's written consent), current and prior addresses with landlord contact information, employer and income, and references. Require every adult who will live in the unit to apply and be screened.

A screening or application fee is normal and covers the cost of the reports. Louisiana does not cap what you can charge, but keep it to your actual, reasonable costs — an inflated fee reads as a barrier and sours the relationship before it starts.

Run credit and background checks — with consent

With the applicant's written authorization, pull a credit report and a background check through a tenant-screening service. You are looking less at the exact score and more at the pattern:

• Payment behavior — a history of paying obligations on time.
• Prior evictions or judgments from previous landlords.
• Debt load — enough monthly obligation to make rent a stretch even on paper.
• Outstanding balances owed to former landlords or utilities.

One late payment during a rough stretch is human. A pattern of collections, an eviction filing, or money still owed to a past landlord is the report telling you something the interview will not.

Verify income, don't just take the number

The application says what they earn; your job is to confirm it. Ask for recent pay stubs, a couple of months of bank statements, or an offer letter for a new job. For self-employed applicants, tax returns or bank deposits do the same work. Match what you see against your income standard — the 3x-rent rule is a starting point, not a law, but applying it consistently is what matters.

Call the previous landlords — and ask the right questions

This is the step most owners skip and the one that most often pays off. Talk to the prior landlord, not just the current one — a current landlord eager to be rid of a bad tenant has a reason to be generous. Ask questions that are hard to spin:

• Did they pay rent on time?
• Would you rent to them again?
• Did they give proper notice when they left?
• Was the unit returned in good condition?
• Were there complaints from neighbors, or any lease violations?

Listen for hesitation as much as the answers. A long pause before "…yes, they paid eventually" tells you more than the word that follows it.

Verify employment

A quick call or written verification to the employer confirms the applicant actually works where they say and earns roughly what they claimed. It is a short step that catches the rare fabricated application before it becomes your problem.

Know what you cannot ask or do

Fair housing draws hard lines. Do not ask about — or base a decision on — an applicant's race, religion, national origin, disability, or whether they have children. You may not refuse a family with kids, and you may not ask a disabled applicant about the nature of their disability (you can ask for verification of a need for a reasonable accommodation, but not the diagnosis). Steering an applicant toward or away from a particular unit or neighborhood is prohibited too. When in doubt, tie the decision to your written financial and rental-history criteria — the ground where you are on solid footing.

Watch for the common red flags

Individually, none of these is automatically disqualifying; together they form a picture:

• Pressure to skip screening or move in immediately.
• An offer to pay several months up front in cash, in lieu of meeting your income or credit standard.
• Income or employment you cannot verify.
• A prior landlord who will not confirm they would rent to the applicant again.
• Gaps or inconsistencies between the application and the documents.

Make the decision — and document it

Approve or decline against your written criteria, then keep a record of why. If you reject an applicant based even in part on a credit or background report, federal law (the Fair Credit Reporting Act) requires you to send an adverse-action notice — telling them the report was used, naming the screening company, and letting them know they can get a free copy and dispute errors. It is a simple notice, and skipping it is an easy, avoidable violation.

Keep applications, screening reports, and your notes for all applicants, approved and declined alike. Consistent records are your best defense if a decision is ever questioned.

A note on Louisiana deposits

Once you have your tenant, the security deposit comes with its own rule here: Louisiana law gives you one month after the lease ends to return the deposit or send an itemized statement of what you kept and why. Put it on your calendar the day the tenant moves out — missing that window can cost you more than the deductions were worth.

Put it together

Good screening is not about finding a perfect tenant; it is about running the same honest process every time so your decisions are consistent and grounded in facts:

1. Write your criteria down before you advertise, and apply them to everyone.
2. Collect a complete application from every adult, with written consent to screen.
3. Run credit and background checks, and read them for patterns.
4. Verify income against your standard with real documents.
5. Call the previous landlord and ask the questions that are hard to dodge.
6. Confirm employment.
7. Stay clear of fair-housing lines — judge the application, not the person.
8. Document the decision, and send an adverse-action notice on any credit-based rejection.

Do that consistently and you will not screen out every problem — no one can — but you will tilt the odds hard in your favor, and you will be able to explain every decision you made. That is what separates filling a unit fast from filling it well.