Selecting a company to help screen prospects is one of the most important decisions apartment operators make. Simply put, it’s a decision they have to get right.

High-quality residents — those who always pay their rent on time and in full and are respectful of their neighbors — are the lifeblood of successful communities. When residents don’t fulfill the financial obligations of their leases, a community’s revenue is compromised, budgets are derailed and investor returns are diminished. 

Bottom line: Apartment managers need top-notch screening providers to sign top-notch residents. So what should operators look for in a screener? Here are some tips.

Make sure the screener covers the basics. It’s imperative that your screening provider examine an applicant’s credit history and conduct criminal background and eviction history checks. Obviously, problems in any of these areas would raise major red flags.

Make sure the screener is on the lookout for fraudulent applications. In this day and age of hackers and identity theft, operators need to be sure their applicants are who they say they are. When interviewing potential screening providers, insist that they have technologies in place to verify consumer identities and spot fraudulent applications and identity theft. It would also be beneficial if the screeners havea means of identifying any aliases applicants may have used over the course of their lives.

Make sure the screener incorporates rental payment history. A high credit score doesn’t always mean a resident is likely to pay rent on time and in full, and a lower score doesn’t always mean they’re likely to default. And an estimated 64 million consumers in the United States don’t have any credit or don’t have enough to generate a credit score.

Rental payment history can help. An Experian^®RentBureau^®analysis of 755,000 residents found that applicants with high credit scores (between 700 and 799) who also had negative rental payment history were more than four times as likely  to default (7.31 percent) as those with positive rental history (1.76 percent). Meanwhile, residents with positive rental payment history and credit scores ranging from 500 to 599 exhibited nearly half the default rate (14.96 percent) of their counterparts in the same range who had negative rental payment history (29.23 percent).

Make sure the screener is customer-service oriented. In the modern multifamily marketplace, operators have to make quick decisions about an application, so they need a provider that can complete the screening process quickly.

And with so much at stake with resident applications, operators need a provider that will promptly and patiently answer any questions and deal with any issues that come up during the screening process. This means a screening provider must be easy to contact and readily available.

For an apartment manager, a thorough screening process can make all the difference between a thriving portfolio and one that is plagued by inconsistent rent payments, lease skips and troublesome residents. To make that comprehensive review process a reality, the right screening provider is a must.