Landlord Guides
Every guide we publish, clustered by the job actually in front of you — screening an applicant, verifying income you cannot see, staying inside fair housing and the FCRA, spotting the fraud that now arrives as a deepfake, and handling late rent before it becomes an eviction.
This is the index to our landlord library, and it is organised the way a landlord’s year actually runs rather than alphabetically. Below the index there is a full walkthrough of the first year — what to do before you list, what to do while an application is open, what to do the day rent is late, and what to do when a tenancy ends. Everything here is free to read with no account.
Start here, depending on where you are
- Never rented a unit before? Read the first-time landlord guide, then the walkthrough further down this page.
- You have an application in front of you right now? Go to how to screen tenants and how to accept or reject a rental application.
- The pay stubs look wrong? Start with verifying tenant income and the AI deepfake application fraud guide.
- Rent is late? Go to late rent laws by state before you send anything.
- Someone is in the property who never had a tenancy? Read squatter rights first, because self-help is the expensive mistake here.
- You want to know what your state requires? Use tenant screening laws by state and our state landlord forms hubs.
The Complete Index
Six clusters. Each one opens with what the cluster is actually for, because a bare list of links makes you guess which article answers your question.
Screening & applications
Screening is the only point in a tenancy where you have complete freedom of choice and near-zero cost of saying no. Every other problem on this page — late rent, damage, an eviction that takes four months — is cheaper here than anywhere downstream. The guides in this cluster cover how to run a screening lawfully, what the report actually tells you, and how to decide.
- How to screen tenants — the end-to-end process, in order.
- Tenant background check — what a report contains and what it does not.
- How to accept or reject a rental application — the decision, and the notice that has to follow a rejection.
- Minimum credit score for renting — why a single cut-off score is a weaker policy than it looks.
- Understanding credit report codes — how to read what you are being sent.
- Pet screening for landlords — and where assistance animals sit outside a pet policy entirely.
- Sublease tenant screening — screening someone your tenant chose.
- Comparing screening services — what differs between providers.
- Comparing background check providers — the wider provider landscape.
Income & credit verification
Verification has become the hard part of screening, because the workforce changed faster than the paperwork did. A salaried applicant with two pay stubs and an employer who answers the phone is now the minority case. These guides cover the three difficult categories — traditional employment where the employer will not confirm, self-employment, and gig work — and what documentation actually proves in each.
- How to verify tenant income — the baseline method and its failure points.
- Verifying self-employed income — returns, bank statements and what a good year hides.
- Verifying gig economy income — platform statements, volatility and how to average honestly.
- Bankruptcy filings in a background check — what appears, and for how long.
- Bankruptcy filings explained — the chapters and what each means for a rental applicant.
Fair housing & FCRA compliance
These are the two federal regimes that govern how you may decide and how you must communicate the decision. They are not the same law and they do not fail in the same way. Fair housing governs who you may treat differently; the FCRA governs what you must tell someone when a report contributed to a rejection. A landlord can comply with one and breach the other in the same email.
- Fair Housing Act guide for landlords — the federal baseline.
- Protected classes — federal classes plus the state and local classes stacked on top.
- FCRA guide for landlords — permissible purpose, adverse action and your obligations as a user of reports.
- Section 8 housing — how the programme works, and why refusing vouchers is unlawful in a growing number of places.
Fraud & scam defence
This cluster exists because rental fraud stopped being a paperwork problem. Fabricated pay stubs used to be photocopies; now they are generated, internally consistent, and they match a fake employer with a real-looking website and a phone number a person answers. Landlords are also targeted directly, not just through applicants. Nothing in this cluster appears in the competing landlord resource indexes we surveyed, and it is where we would send a new landlord first after screening.
- AI and deepfake application fraud — synthetic documents, synthetic identities and what still catches them.
- Fake check and overpayment scams — the deposit that clears and then reverses.
- Utility phishing scams aimed at landlords — the shut-off threat that targets you, not the tenant.
Late rent & evictions
Almost every rule that matters here is state law, and the numbers differ by more than people expect — the pre-filing notice runs from three days in some states to fourteen in others, and several states require specific wording on the page or the notice is void. Read your state before you send anything, because a defective notice usually means starting the clock again.
- Late rent laws by state — grace periods, fee limits and notice periods, state by state.
- Eviction records in screening — what you may consider, and the states that restrict it.
- Squatter rights — occupation without a tenancy, and why the remedy is still a court.
State law by topic
Landlord-tenant law is state law with a thin federal layer over the top. The federal layer is small: lead paint for pre-1978 housing, the FCRA, and the Fair Housing Act. Everything else — deposits, notices, entry, late fees, termination — is your state’s, and often your city’s on top of that.
- Tenant screening laws by state — application fees, criminal-record limits and look-back rules.
- Late rent laws by state — the money side, state by state.
- Eviction record laws — sealing, expungement and what remains reportable.
- First-time landlord guide — the orientation to read before any of the above.
The First Year, in Order
The index above answers “where is the article about X”. This section answers the question a new landlord actually has, which is “what am I supposed to do next”. It is ordered by time, not by topic.
Before you list: the decisions that are hard to reverse
Find out what your state and city require, before anything else. This is the step people skip and it is the one that generates the most avoidable cost. Several states require a written agreement before you may take a deposit at all. Several require a signed condition record. Several prescribe the exact wording of a nonpayment notice, and a notice missing that wording is not a notice. A few cities require registration or licensing before you may rent lawfully. None of that is discoverable after the fact.
Decide how you will hold the property. Whether to own a rental personally or through an entity is a real question with tax, liability and financing consequences, and it is genuinely different depending on your state, your lender and your other assets. We do not publish a guide on this, and we would rather say so than hand you a generic answer: this is a question for an attorney and an accountant in your state, and it is much cheaper to ask before you buy than to restructure afterwards.
Set the rent from evidence, not from your mortgage. What the property costs you is not what it is worth. Look at what comparable units in the same school catchment, with the same bedroom count and the same parking situation, actually rented for in the last ninety days — not what they are currently asking. A unit listed above market sits empty, and one empty month usually costs more than a year of the difference between an optimistic rent and a realistic one.
Get the property genuinely lettable. Every state imposes a habitability duty, whether by statute or by case law, and in most it cannot be waived by a lease clause. Working heat, hot water, functioning plumbing and electrical, weather-tight structure and working smoke alarms are the floor everywhere. Fixing them before a tenancy is maintenance. Fixing them after a complaint, in many states, is a rent-withholding or repair-and-deduct event with penalties attached.
Get the insurance right. A standard homeowner policy generally does not cover a property let to a tenant. Landlord policies exist for the purpose and typically address liability and loss of rental income. Talk to your insurer specifically about tenant occupancy before the first tenant moves in, rather than discovering the exclusion at claim time.
While the unit is listed
Write the advert to the property, never to the tenant. This is the most common inadvertent fair housing breach. “Two bedroom, off-street parking, no smoking” describes a property. “Perfect for a young professional couple” or “quiet building, ideal for mature tenants” describes who you want, and both express a preference about characteristics the law protects. Read the Fair Housing Act guide before your first advert, not after your first complaint.
Write down your criteria before you meet anyone. Minimum income ratio, credit standard, rental history requirement, occupancy standard — decided in advance, in writing, and applied identically to every applicant. Written criteria are simultaneously the best fair housing defence you have and the thing that stops you talking yourself into a bad tenant because you liked them. Applying a standard inconsistently is far more dangerous than having a slightly strict one.
Check what your state allows you to charge and to consider. Application fee limits, criminal-record look-back restrictions and source-of-income rules vary enormously, and several states have changed them recently. See tenant screening laws by state.
When an application arrives
- Get written authorisation before pulling any consumer report. Permissible purpose under the FCRA is not assumed from the fact that someone applied.
- Run the same checks for everyone. Credit, background, eviction history, income and prior landlords — the same set, in the same order.
- Verify income properly for the applicant’s actual situation. Salaried, self-employed and gig income each require different documents and different scepticism. The cluster above covers all three.
- Call the landlord before the current one. The current landlord may want the tenant gone and has an incentive to be generous. The previous one has none.
- Treat documents as claims until verified. Pay stubs and employment letters are now trivially generatable. Verify the employer independently — find the number yourself rather than calling the one on the letter.
- Decide against your written criteria, and write down the reason.
- If a report contributed to a rejection, send the adverse action notice. This is an FCRA obligation, not a courtesy, and it must identify the agency that supplied the report and tell the applicant of their rights to a free copy and to dispute it. Skipping it is one of the most common landlord compliance failures, and it is entirely avoidable.
At move-in
Record the condition of the unit in writing, with both signatures and dated photographs. In several states this is a statutory precondition to holding a deposit at all, and in the rest it is simply the difference between a deduction you can prove and one you cannot. Photographs alone are weaker than a signed record, because the argument at move-out is rarely about whether the mark exists — it is about whether it existed before.
Handle the deposit exactly as your state requires. Deposit rules are the most punitive area of landlord-tenant law in most states, and the penalties are usually automatic. Depending on where you are, the rules may cover a maximum amount, which bank the money must sit in, a receipt naming that bank, interest, a return deadline, an itemised statement, and in a few states a sworn statement. Missing a purely administrative step can forfeit the whole deposit regardless of what the tenant did to the property.
Hand over the federally required lead paint material for any dwelling built before 1978, and whatever your state adds on top.
During the tenancy
Give notice before entering, in writing, even where the statute is vague. Some states set a fixed period, some say only “reasonable”, and a few say nothing at all. A written notice costs nothing and is the only evidence you will have if a tenant later alleges harassment through repeated entry — which is a recognised claim in several states even where each individual entry was lawful.
Act on the first late payment, not the third. Not aggressively — just consistently. A tenant who learns that rent is due on the fifteenth will pay on the fifteenth. Check your state’s late rent rules first, because grace periods and fee limits are real in many states and an unlawful fee undermines your position in any later case.
Answer repair requests in writing and keep the thread. The written record is what distinguishes a landlord who responded from one who says they did.
Never use self-help. Changing locks, removing doors, shutting off utilities or removing belongings to force a tenant out is unlawful in every state, and the penalties are frequently multiples of the rent plus the tenant’s attorney fees. It is the single most expensive mistake available to a landlord, and it is usually made by someone who is legally in the right about the underlying arrears.
When the tenancy ends
Give the notice your state’s statute requires, in the form it requires. Notice periods vary from seven days to three months depending on the state, the tenancy type and sometimes how long the tenant has lived there. Several states prescribe verbatim wording. A defective notice usually means serving again and starting over.
Return the deposit on your state’s clock, with the itemisation it demands. The deadline is commonly between fourteen and forty-five days, and the consequence of missing it is usually not a scolding — it is losing the right to deduct anything at all, and in several states double or treble damages plus fees.
Follow the abandoned property procedure. Most states have one, with storage periods and notice requirements. Discarding a departed tenant’s belongings without following it is a claim you will lose.
The Money Side: Taxes and Records
We do not publish tax guides, and we are not going to improvise one. Rental taxation is federal, state and situation-specific, and the difference between a repair and an improvement alone changes when you deduct and over how many years. Getting it wrong is expensive in both directions — overpaying quietly, or underpaying and finding out later with interest.
What we will say is the part that is not really a tax question at all: the reason most landlords lose money at tax time is record-keeping, not tax law. Keep a separate bank account for the property from day one. Keep every invoice. Log mileage as you drive it. Note against each expense what it was for and which unit it belonged to. An accountant can work with poor records for a fee; nobody can reconstruct a receipt that was never kept.
Then take those records to a professional in your state. That is a genuinely worthwhile few hundred dollars in the first year, and the answer will be specific to how you own the property.
Where to Get Help That Is Not Us
An honest resource index should tell you when to look elsewhere, so here is that list.
- Your state or local landlord association. Most states have one, and many metros have their own. They are usually the fastest route to a lease that already complies with local requirements, and to knowing which local ordinance changed last month.
- Your state’s attorney general or consumer protection office. Many publish a landlord-tenant handbook in plain language, and several are genuinely good.
- The court clerk in the county where the property sits. For eviction procedure, filing fees and local forms, the clerk is authoritative and free. Filing fees and local rules vary by court even within a state, and no national website can tell you what your court charges this month.
- A local landlord-tenant attorney, once, early. An hour spent reviewing your lease before the first tenancy is the cheapest legal work you will ever buy.
- Your insurer, specifically about tenant occupancy. Ask the question directly and get the answer in writing.
What We Do Not Cover
We would rather scope this honestly than pad an index with links to nothing.
No tax or accounting guidance beyond the record-keeping point above — no depreciation, deduction checklists or entity-structure advice.
No business-formation guidance. Whether to hold property in an entity is an attorney-and-accountant question, and the right answer is genuinely state-specific.
No landlord insurance product comparisons, and no advice on cover levels.
No property management software or listing platform reviews.
No mortgage, financing or investment analysis.
Our depth is screening, verification, fraud defence, and the state-by-state legal rules that govern forms, notices and deposits. That is what twenty years of running screening actually taught us, and it is where our guides are worth reading rather than merely present.
The Mistakes That Cost the Most
- Skipping screening because the applicant seemed fine. Every guide on this page is downstream of this decision.
- Applying criteria inconsistently. More dangerous than strict criteria, and harder to defend.
- Describing the ideal tenant in the advert instead of describing the property.
- Skipping the adverse action notice after a report-based rejection.
- Accepting documents at face value in an environment where they are generated on demand.
- Calling only the current landlord, who may want the tenant gone.
- Taking a deposit without the written record your state requires first.
- Mishandling the deposit administratively — wrong account, no receipt, no itemised statement, missed deadline.
- Using a generic lease from the internet that ignores your state’s mandatory terms, and in a few states voids the whole agreement.
- Entering without notice, or repeatedly with notice in a way a court would read as harassment.
- Letting late rent become a habit before saying anything.
- Charging a late fee your state does not permit.
- Serving a notice missing your state’s mandatory wording.
- Using self-help. Locks, utilities or belongings — multiples of rent plus fees, in every state.
- Discarding abandoned belongings without following the statutory procedure.
- Keeping no records until the accountant asks for them.
How This Index Compares
We looked at the landlord resource pages currently ranking for this query before building this one, and the pattern was clean: they split into two kinds, and neither kind does both jobs.
One kind is a large index with no substance — dozens of form names in a flat alphabetical list, where most of the page’s word count is link labels. You can find a document if you already know its name. You cannot find out whether it is the right document.
The other kind is substance with no index — a good linear article on becoming a landlord, with no route into anything else. It is the deeper content, and it is a dead end.
Exactly one page in the set does both, and that is the shape we have followed here: clustered index with real framing per cluster, at the depth of the deepest article ranker rather than the depth of the shallowest index. That is why this page has a walkthrough attached to it rather than only a list of links, and why each cluster opens with a paragraph explaining what the cluster is for.
Landlord Guides: FAQ
What should a first-time landlord do first?
Find out what your state and city require before you list. Several states require a written rental agreement before you may take a deposit at all, several require a signed condition record, several prescribe the exact wording of a nonpayment notice, and some cities require registration. None of that can be fixed after the fact. Start with the first-time landlord guide, then your state’s rules.
What forms does a landlord need?
At minimum: a state-compliant lease, a move-in condition record, a notice to enter, a rent increase notice, a late rent notice, the nonpayment notice your state prescribes, a notice to cure or quit, a notice of non-renewal, and a deposit itemisation and return letter. For pre-1978 housing you also need the federally required lead paint material. We publish all of these as free fillable PDFs on our state landlord forms hubs.
How do I screen a tenant legally?
Get written authorisation before pulling any consumer report, apply written criteria set in advance identically to every applicant, verify income with documents appropriate to how the applicant actually earns, contact prior landlords rather than only the current one, and send an adverse action notice if a report contributed to a rejection. Application fee limits and criminal-record look-back rules are state law — check tenant screening laws by state first.
What is an adverse action notice and when is it required?
It is the notice the FCRA requires when a consumer report contributed to a decision against an applicant — a rejection, a higher deposit or a co-signer requirement. It must identify the consumer reporting agency that supplied the report and tell the applicant they may get a free copy and dispute inaccuracies. It is a legal obligation, not a courtesy, and skipping it is one of the most common landlord compliance failures. See the FCRA guide for landlords.
How do I verify income for a self-employed or gig-economy applicant?
Not with pay stubs, because there are none. Self-employed applicants are verified from tax returns and business bank statements, reading net rather than gross and looking at more than one year. Gig income is verified from platform earnings statements, averaged over enough months to show volatility rather than a good week. Both are covered in detail in verifying self-employed income and verifying gig economy income.
How do I spot a fake pay stub or a fraudulent application?
Assume documents are claims until independently verified. Find the employer’s phone number yourself rather than calling the one printed on the letter, check that the employer exists independently of the applicant’s paperwork, and compare stated income against bank deposits rather than against another document from the same source. Generated documents are now internally consistent, so internal consistency proves nothing. See AI and deepfake application fraud.
What are the protected classes under fair housing law?
The federal Fair Housing Act covers race, colour, religion, sex, national origin, familial status and disability. Many states and cities add further classes on top — source of income, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, marital status and military status are common additions — so the federal list is a floor, not the whole answer. See protected classes.
Can a landlord refuse a Section 8 voucher?
It depends entirely on where the property is. There is no federal rule requiring a private landlord to accept vouchers, but a growing number of states, counties and cities prohibit source-of-income discrimination, and in those places refusing a voucher is unlawful. Check your state and your city, because a state without a rule may still contain a city with one. See Section 8 housing.
How much notice must a landlord give before entering?
It is state law and it varies more than people expect — some states set a fixed period, some require only “reasonable” notice, and a few impose no statutory requirement at all. Some also restrict the hours. Give written notice regardless, because repeated entry can support a harassment claim in several states even where each individual entry was lawful. Our state landlord forms hubs carry the specific rule for each state.
What can a landlord deduct from a security deposit?
Generally unpaid rent and damage beyond ordinary wear and tear — but the detail is state law, and several states exclude specific items such as routine carpet cleaning, or bar any deduction for a condition that was not recorded in writing at move-in. Most states also impose a return deadline and an itemisation requirement whose breach forfeits the right to deduct anything at all, sometimes with double or treble damages. Check your state before deducting.
What should a landlord never do?
Never use self-help. Changing locks, removing doors, shutting off utilities or removing belongings to force a tenant out is unlawful in every state, and the penalty is frequently a multiple of the rent plus the tenant’s attorney fees — regardless of how much rent the tenant owes. The eviction process is slow, and it is still cheaper than the alternative.
Where do landlord filing fees and court forms come from?
The court clerk in the county where the property sits. Eviction filing fees are set by local court cost schedules and change, and several states have no statewide eviction form set at all — in some, the required notices are prescribed by statute instead. The clerk is authoritative, free, and faster than any website.
Related Guides
- Security deposit assistance programs — what ESG, CoC, HOME and SSVF will actually pay toward a deposit, and what accepting it obliges you to do.
- First-time landlord guide — the orientation to read before anything else.
- How to screen tenants — the end-to-end screening process.
- FCRA guide for landlords — permissible purpose and adverse action.
- Fair Housing Act guide — the federal baseline for every decision.
- Tenant screening laws by state — fees, look-backs and local limits.
- Late rent laws by state — grace periods and fee limits.
- How to verify tenant income — the baseline method and its failure points.
- AI and deepfake application fraud — the fastest-moving risk on this list.
- Squatter rights — occupation without a tenancy.
- Tenant background check — what a report contains and what it does not.
Published by Tenant Screening Background Check · Editorial Team
Established 2004. Our editorial team has spent two decades helping landlords and property managers run lawful tenant screening and follow state landlord-tenant codes across all fifty states. This index is deliberately narrower than it could be: we cover screening, verification, fraud defence and state legal rules in depth, and we send you elsewhere for tax, entity structure and insurance rather than writing thin guides on subjects where a local professional will do better.
Screen Applicants Before They Sign
Nearly every problem described on this page is cheaper to prevent at the application stage than to resolve afterwards. Order FCRA-ready credit, criminal and eviction reports and start every tenancy on solid ground.
Last reviewed 2026. This page is general information for landlords, not legal advice and not tax advice. Landlord-tenant law is state law with a thin federal layer, and city ordinances frequently add requirements on top; deposit rules, notice periods, entry rules and late fee limits differ substantially between states and change regularly. Nothing here should be relied on as the rule in your jurisdiction. Confirm the current position with your state’s statutes, your county court clerk, or an attorney licensed where the property sits before serving a notice, withholding a deposit or filing a case.
