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General Question - Does anyone have feedback on a resident screening process that forgoes income verification - meaning residents are qualified on credit/criminal only without consideration for debt-to-income ratio?

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Wendy DeSchoolmeester Is this for a subsidy rent program? What type of feedback are you looking for?

Kate Costello Wendy Kaiser DeSchoolmeester we are considering for conventional screenings. We have found in reviewing evictions occurring over the last 24 months that income qualifying was not an issue with those evicted the vast majority of the time and that it truly was a credit situation that we should have weighed more heavily in hindsight. I'm of the theory that those who take paying seriously figure out how to pay and those that don't, won't., so why eliminate people that have a strong history of on-time payments across their credit history if they don't make the formulaic income qualifier.

Julie Curtis Kate Costello most of them likely provided you with fraudulent paystubs. Either that or you’re in a very volatile market and need to significantly increase deposits or offer alternative programs. Screening won’t help with default other than to weed out fraud… I recommend Two Dots. What you are suggesting will lead to a large demographic of people earning illegal income…aka highly likely to default.

Kate Costello Sorry - so what I was looking for was any feedback from company's that taken this approach with their screening models.

Brooke Nuber-Soldate With how expensive rents are getting, removing the income requirements has helped people get in, but it's precarious and bordering on predatory to allow someone to spend 50%+ of their income on your rental contract.
I would recommend lowering it to like 2x or 2.5x rent, but eliminating it can cause issues for people who don't fully understand their budgets. Particularly first time renters. It's protection for both you and the tenant to have it.
Credit can definitely be an indicator, but I caution you with first time renters still. I had excellent credit in college because I had loans but I wasn't paying them at the time so my credit history wasn't actually a reflection of my budgeting skills. I just had debt that hadn't gone bad and my credit score looked good because of it. I was making $8000 a year at the time, so I would not be a very good renter but you wouldn't know that if you didn't ask for my income.

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