If they are minimally qualified, then they are qualified. If you then take into consideration things that were not a part of the requirements, then that’s discrimination.
If they meet your minimum requirements, then what do you get out of them having better than the minimum?
Then set your criteria as an 800 credit score or better is required.
I’m not sure such a first/last/deposit application requirement is possible. It would definitely not be possible for me. I’m not going to bother to dig through Washington’s and Seattle’s landlord/tenant laws, but in Boulder, Colorado an application fee can only be used to cover the actual cost of processing the application. For example, a $20 fee to cover the credit and background check is allowed, but an extra $25 “windfall” fee is not allowed.
First/last/deposit are not an expense related to application processing, so could not be charged to submit an application. First/last/deposit can certainly be required at lease signing, but that is different from the application.
This brings up another area where this can end up screwing up the applicant. I only charge the $20 application fee to the people I actually want to run a credit check on, and that is only people who I’ve made an offer to, contingent on the results of the credit check. No need to collect $20 from a bunch of other people.
If I’m forced to pick the first qualified applicant, then I’m going to have to charge everybody the $20 fee, because I won’t know who is qualified until I do the credit check.
Wouldn’t you just do the credit check in the order received? If the first one isn’t qualified, go on to the next one, and so on.
Yes, but that means I need $20 from each person who hands me an application, if they want to be part of that list.
As it is now, I contact an applicant and say I’ll make them an offer, but it’s contingent on their credit history, and there is a $20 fee. If they aren’t interested in my place anymore, then they never have to pay me $20, and I repeat the process with the next applicant. I suppose I could do the same thing with timed applications, but that adds yet another delay into the 48 hour window, which to me is the biggest problem.
State: Did the complainant apply for the apartment? When did you receive that application?
T&C: Well, they never actually applied. 
I didn’t get an application. Not a complete one. 
State: They did not apply for the apartment?
T&C: They never completed an application.
State: What is the document marked as Exhibit B?
T&C: Ah, yes. 
That is an incomplete application
State: You received this document from the Complainant?
T&C: I received this document. The incomplete application.
State: What does it say at the top?
T&C: It says “Application for Rental”
State: And you received it from the Complainant, looking just like this?
T&C: Yes but it i-
State: When did you receive that application?
T&C: Well, that’s not the complete application, I-
State: When did you receive that application?
T&C: I never received a complete application. A complete application required a check.
State: Required a check?
T&C: I did not consider an application a completed application until I received a check for first and last month’s rent.
State: What is the document that is marked as Exhibit C?
T&C: That looks like the online ad for the apartment
State: Does that ad say how to apply for the apartment?
T&C: …
State: …
T&C: 
State: Does the ad say how to apply?
T&C: Well it depends on, really, I mean if you’re asking-
State: What does it say about applying?
T&C: It says send application
State: Did the complainant send this application?
T&C: Well, they sent that form in. I haven’t denied they sent in the form.
State: The application.
T&C: The form that says application. At the top. Yes. But-
State: Did you receive this on the date that is marked on the top?
T&C: I received… when we say receive, it was incomp-
State: Do you have your checkbook on you?
There isn’t any reason why you couldn’t collect $20 from each applicant, and then refund their money if you don’t make it to them.
Out of curiosity, how often do people fail their credit check? It seems they would know what it is, and not bother to give you $20 if they know that it won’t be high enough.
I assume you tell them what the minimum credit score is?
I’m finding several cites that indicate that roughly one in four Americans don’t know or understand their credit score. I would not be surprised if that lack of knowledge skews towards people who are on the lower end of the credit-score range.
I would say you’re the outlier. In all my history of applying for apartments, I’ve always expected to pay some sort of non-refundable application fee upfront. And that’s without any sort of first in line law.
Mostly just being a pain. The credit check costs me $20, so I want that money from the applicant before I run it. I also refund it on the first month’s rent to the successful applicant.
I offer personal service! I don’t have a particular score I’m looking for, but rather why the score is low. If you aren’t bothering to pay back Citibank, why do I think you’ll pay me? I rented to one person with a low score because she had some defaulted medical debt—that wasn’t debt she took on voluntarily, and she’d always made her car payments, credit card payments, etc.
A prior eviction would also be a big problem, but there I have to look one state at a time, so I just have to guess.
The person with medical debt did tell me about her low score, but other than the one blemish she was responsible, and her credit history showed that to be true.
I did have one couple that I did not offer to because they warned me about the low credit score. She was foreign, and claimed to be in the country legally, but not on a visa that allowed her to work, and she had essentially no credit history in the US. He was a US citizen, but had very bad credit because a few years prior he’d left the country and stopped paying all of his debts.
Not wanting to be stuck with people who have a history taking off and leaving debt behind, I told them no.
After I made an offer to somebody else, which was accepted, she got back to me and proposed paying a year of rent in advance. It turns out that the foreign woman had founded a company with her graduate advisor, which was then purchased, so she had a very large amount of money in the bank. By then it was too late, but I told her next time lead with that, not the story about her boyfriend going to Nepal to avoid his creditors.
So, according to that, most people do know their credit score. It’s actually pretty easy to get.
I’ll admit that for a number of years I didn’t know mine. But that’s because I knew it was terrible and I just didn’t want to have the terribleness quantified. But I also knew that I wasn’t going to be qualifying for anything, so I didn’t try.
Sure, most do (and, yes, it’s easy to get your score these days, if you know how to go about it), but if one in four don’t, I don’t think it should be surprising if some applicants for an apartment wind up unexpectedly failing their credit checks, even if they’ve been told ahead of time what the minimum credit score will be.
We’ve got a lengthy thread here on the board about why financial literacy is such an uncommon thing, and not knowing your credit score (or how to go about even finding it out) is probably part of that.
I know I am. I hope by treating my tenants well, it is some kind of karma and I’ll get treated well in return. Most corporate places have a $50 or more application fee, and sometimes they get in trouble for charging it even after the place being applied for has been rented to somebody else.
Like I said, the fee is only allowed to cover actual expenses, and the few cents required to print an application page seems too trivial to charge for just handing me a piece of paper. Electronic applications don’t cost me anything to accept.
My thought would be that you would collect from each applicant. If you don’t get around to running their check, then you can refund it.
That sounds a bit dangerous. There is a reason why you want to use objective criteria, as subjective criteria are more easily seen as discrimination. You may not see it that way, but is the FHA going to?
And credit reports aren’t always accurate. Mine says that I owe a bank $10,000. I’ve filed fraud claims, which they have accepted and told me I don’t owe them anything, but it still shows up on my credit report.
At the same time, I know people who got evicted after their landlord raised their rent by 300%. Is it really fair to hold that against them?
If you don’t, you can type “How do I get a free credit report” into google, and it’ll take you right where you need to be.
Unless they were like me, and didn’t know it because they didn’t want to know it.
Picking any tenant is discriminating against anyone you didn’t pick. Picking the first person to apply is discriminating against people who apply later. The question is whether this is a type of discrimination that (1) the law wants to prohibit, and (2) that the law has successfully prohibited.
When you buy a car, do you set minimum criteria and just buy the first one that you find that meets them or do you look at what options you have and choose the best among them?
If it isn’t possible (and perhaps it isn’t), I’d be somewhat interested in the citation. But not interested enough to look for it myself.
@Jimmy_Chitwood, that’s some nice fan fiction you’ve written there.
Agreed – that’s probably a big part of it, too. “I know it’s bad, I don’t want to know how bad.”
Yes, this can be a problem. If it came down to it, is a court going to believe me when I say that I rejected them because they defaulted on their car payments, or their claim that it’s because their a member of a protected class? (How was I even supposed to know he was a veteran!)
I’m not sure how that could happen. If it’s time to renew the lease, and the landlord raises the rent 300%, and the person refuses to leave, that is not somebody I want to rent to.
Do predatory leases exist where the rent can be raised at anytime, and the person is required to pay it for the term of the lease? I don’t doubt it, but I also can’t imagine that standing up in court. Of course that requires the tenant to have enough money to pay a lawyer to fight it in court.
And the question is also whether this is a type of discrimination that, while you don’t intend it to be the kind that the law has prohibited, looks exactly like the kind that the law has prohibited.
The car isn’t looking for a place to live. It’s more the other way around. If you go look at a car, do you want to buy it at the price that you agree upon, or do you want the salesman to see if the guy behind you is going to make a better offer?
It happens because the landlord jacks up the rates and gives them less than a month’s notice. They sign the new lease because otherwise they are homeless, and when they find something more affordable, the landlord refuses to let them out of their lease and files it as an eviction if they leave.
And that brings up a whole other list of reasons people get evicted through no fault of their own (other than renting from an unethical landlord). Landlord makes up a bunch of citations from whole cloth, and the tenant doesn’t have the resources to fight it, often first learning of the eviction when it is posted on their door.
Perhaps not, but they only need to get to this point:
I think it’s a fair question to ask if an application is really incomplete if you feel comfortable reviewing the “not-an-application” in order to decide if a “not-yet-applicant” is acceptable.