FCRA Requirements – Are you taking your Tenant Screening serious?

If you’re a landlord, then you have most likely heard of the FCRA, Fair Credit Reporting Act.  They are a federal agency who holds landlords accountable to promote fair practices, regulation, and privacy for consumer reporting agencies.  Landlords, it doesn’t matter if you own one property or 100 properties, you have no choice but to comply with rules and regulations or be penalized. 

The FCRA regulates who can access information on people, it’s that simple.  They also regulate whose denied employment and housing.  Therefore, you should have a legitimate business and be doing business with a reputable employment screening or tenant screening company.   Did you know that having public information about someone cannot be used when considering them for a housing lease?  For example, you cannot deny someone housing because you spoke with the applicant’s neighbor and they made negative comments about the person or because of a person’s social media presence out on the Internet.  None of this public information can be used for tenant screening in a negative way.

Many landlords today use consumer reports to help them evaluate rental applications, which include reports from tenant-screening companies who provide information such as an applicant’s rental history based on reports from prior landlords or a credit report from the credit bureau.   Although, these consumer reports are full of information about the potential tenant, landlords must be careful when it comes to following the FCRA guidelines when verifying this information.  The FCRA only covers those landlords who work with agencies initially hired by the landlord themselves.

So what happens when the information that you have from the consumer report assists you in denying someone housing?  This is called an adverse action, also known as rejecting the applicant.  Again, the FCRA plays a major role in the rejection of all applicants.  As you may know, this is part of the tenant screening process and could cause many problems for the landlord if not handled with finesse.

• The FCRA states that if applicants are rejected then they have a right to the following:
  They must be told if the information in their file has been used against them.
• The must be provided with the name, address and phone number of the
    agency that provided the information.
• They have the right to ask for a credit score.
• They have the right to dispute incomplete or inaccurate information.

Landlords, please make sure you are taking the FCRA compliance requirements very seriously when it comes to Tenant Screening.  Point2 Property Manager would like to help you make this process as seamless as possible that is why we partnered up with ScreeningWorks.  Comprehensive tenant screening services are a necessity, but access to these services can be difficult to secure for many property management companies who do not meet rigorous FCRA compliance standards.

Point2 Property Manager has partnered with ScreeningWorks, an industry leader in resident screening to allow you instant access to important information about your applicant’s credit and background history.  Point2 Property Manager has made it easy for you to sign up with no waiting for approval.  It’s also directly integrated into the Point2 Property Manager Online Software Solution!