Tenant Screening · Annotated Sample Report

Sample Tenant Screening Report

A complete screening report, rendered section by section for a synthetic applicant – and, beside every section, how to actually read it and what it obligates you to do.

A tenant screening report is not one document – it is roughly a dozen separate database searches bound together under one cover page. It opens with identity verification (a Social Security number check and a deceased-file match), then a credit section with a score and the tradelines behind it, then public records such as judgments and liens, then a nationwide eviction search, then criminal, sex offender, and OFAC watchlist searches, then residence history and household members, then employment history when it is available. Some screening products close with a risk score or an approve/deny recommendation; this report does not – when the searches turn up a red flag, it closes with a specific warning about each one, and the decision stays with you. Each module is its own search with its own coverage, its own failure modes, and its own legal baggage. Reading the report means reading every section, not one number.

Most “sample report” pages show you the artifact and stop, or explain the concept and never show you anything. This page does both. Below is a full report for Jordan A. Sample – a synthetic applicant invented for this walkthrough, containing no real person’s data – with an interpretation panel under every module explaining what the fields mean, what is signal, what is noise, and which findings trigger a legal duty under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Jordan’s file is deliberately mixed rather than spotless, because a clean report teaches you nothing.

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Video: a short overview of what a comprehensive tenant screening report contains – credit, eviction, criminal history, residence history, and employment history (when available).

Key Takeaways

• A report is a bundle of independent searches. Credit, eviction, criminal, identity, employment, and residence history each succeed or fail separately. “Clear” in one module says nothing about the others.
• The score is the summary, not the evidence. Read the payment grid, the collections, and the recency of negatives underneath it. A modest score with a clean recent grid beats a high score with fresh delinquencies.
• Identity drives coverage. The Social Security number trace and address history decide which counties get searched. A weak identity match quietly narrows every search that follows.
• Reporting limits differ by item under 15 U.S.C. section 1681c(a): seven years for collections, judgments, and arrests (or the statute of limitations, whichever is longer), ten years for bankruptcy, and no federal limit on conviction records.
• Acting on the report triggers a duty. Any denial, higher deposit, or co-signer demand driven by the report requires an adverse action notice under 15 U.S.C. section 1681m – including the numerical score you relied on.

What This Page Covers

1. The cover page and summary
2. Identity and Social Security trace
3. Address history and search coverage
4. Credit summary and score bands
5. Tradelines and the payment grid
6. Collections, judgments, and liens
7. Eviction history
8. Criminal background
9. Sex offender and OFAC searches
10. Employment history (when available)
11. Residence history and household members
12. Pet screening
13. The red-flag warnings
14. What the report will not tell you
15. How long each module takes
16. Cost, fees, and state caps
17. Portable and reusable reports
18. FCRA duties and adverse action
19. Fair housing and criminal screening
20. For applicants: your own report
21. Errors and mixed files
22. Turning the report into a decision
23. Frequently asked questions

1. The Cover Page: Score, Status, and Summary

Direct answer: the cover page is a summary of the modules beneath it, and it is the part of the report you should trust least on its own. It compresses a dozen searches into a score and a one-word status flag. That compression is useful for triage across twenty applicants and dangerous as a basis for a decision, because the cover page cannot tell you whether the “REVIEW” flag came from a twelve-year-old misdemeanor or an eviction filed last spring.

Why 648 is a “fair” score

Notice the scale label: FICO® Score, 300 to 850. This is a generic credit score: it predicts whether someone will repay borrowed money, not how they will behave as a tenant. FICO calls 580 to 669 the fair range and starts good at 670, so Jordan’s 648 is a fair score – not poor, not good. It is the range where the number settles least on its own and the payment history underneath it has to decide, which is why sections 4 and 5 below matter more than the number on the cover.

The practical consequence: name the score model in your criteria. A FICO Score, a VantageScore, and the rental-specific scores some other screening products show are different models, and a 648 in one is not a 648 in another. If your written criteria say “minimum 650,” you must specify which score, or your standard is unenforceable and inconsistently applied – which is a fair housing problem, not just a sloppiness problem. Our guide to setting a minimum credit score for renting works through how to write a defensible cutoff.

2. Identity and the Social Security Number Trace

Direct answer: identity is the module every other module depends on, and it is the one landlords skim. A screening report is only a report about your applicant if the searches ran against your applicant’s true identifiers. If the Social Security number trace fails or the name match is loose, the criminal and eviction searches may have been run against a partial or wrong identity – and a “clear” result means nothing at all.

The identity red flags that matter

• Trace returns a different name. A number associated primarily with someone else is the classic signature of a borrowed or stolen identity. Stop and ask for documentation before you go further.
• Deceased file hit. Numbers of deceased people are a known fraud vector. This is a full stop, not a discussion.
• Trace returns no addresses. A number with no address history behind it is either newly issued – plausible for a young or recently arrived applicant – or synthetic. The distinction matters and is worth a conversation.
• Address list contradicts the application. If the applicant listed two prior addresses and the trace shows five in three states, ask why. Sometimes it is a spouse’s mail. Sometimes it is the two years they hoped you would not search.

3. Address History: The Module That Decides What Gets Searched

Direct answer: address history is not biography, it is a search plan. Criminal records in the United States live in county courthouses and state repositories, not in a single national vault. The “national criminal database” is an aggregation with real gaps. What closes those gaps is knowing where the person actually lived, so the screening company can order county-level searches in those jurisdictions. That is what this module produces.

Reading the gaps

Address traces are built from credit header data, which means they lag reality and miss people who live outside the credit system. Expect imperfection: a recent move can take months to surface, and someone who has rented informally or lived with family may show a thin trace through no fault of their own. The inference to draw from a thin trace is “I have less coverage here than I think,” not “this person is hiding something.” Ask, and then decide with the answer in hand.

The trap runs the other way too. If your applicant lived in a county the trace missed, the criminal search never covered that county – and your report will say “no records found” with complete confidence. “No records found” means “none found in the places we looked.” Knowing where you looked is the whole point of this module.

4. Credit Summary and What the Score Bands Mean

Direct answer: the credit module answers one question – does this person pay recurring obligations on time – and the score is a lossy summary of the answer. Read the summary for orientation, then go to the tradelines. Two applicants with identical scores can have opposite risk profiles.

Score reason codes: why the number is what it is

Most reports include reason codes – short statements of the factors that most depressed the score. They are the closest thing the file offers to an explanation, and they are also what you will need if the score drives a denial, because an adverse action notice must disclose the score and the key factors behind it.

Credit score bands

These bands are the ranges FICO uses for its 300 to 850 scale. They describe the score, not a legal standard, and no band obliges you to do anything.

Jordan’s 648 lands in the Fair row (580-669). Read the row’s advice literally: in the fair range the score does not settle the question, and the payment grid in the next section does. If a report in front of you shows a different score model, such as a VantageScore or a rental-specific score, read it against that model’s own bands, never against these.

5. Tradelines and the Payment Grid

Direct answer: the tradeline section is the evidence, and the payment grid inside it is the single most predictive thing in the entire report. Everything above is a summary of this. Each tradeline is one account: who it is with, when it opened, what is owed, and a month-by-month record of whether it was paid on time.

Decoding what you just read

• The rating code is a letter plus a number. The letter is the account type – R for revolving, I for installment, M for mortgage, O for open. The number is payment behavior, from 1 (paid as agreed) up to 9 (charge-off or collection). So R1 is a credit card paid on time; I3 is an installment loan that reached 60 to 89 days past due.
• The ECOA designator says who is legally responsible. Individual means the applicant alone owes it. Joint means shared liability. Authorized user means they can use the account but are not liable for it – and this is the quiet trap. An applicant whose only pristine tradelines are authorized-user accounts has borrowed someone else’s history, not built their own.
• The grid is one marker per month. OK is on time; a number is days past due. Read it left to right and ask two questions: is the trouble recent, and does it repeat?

Jordan’s grid tells a specific story. The auto loan went 60 days past due, then 30, then recovered – one episode, roughly fourteen months back, on the largest fixed obligation in the file. The store card took a single 30-day mark. Everything else is clean, including a nine-year card and a student loan that never missed. That shape – a cluster of lates concentrated in one window, then a return to normal – almost always reflects an event, not a habit. A job change, a medical bill, a divorce. It is worth asking about, and the answer is usually mundane and verifiable. Our full guide to understanding credit report codes decodes every rating and status code you will meet.

6. Collections, Judgments, and Liens

Direct answer: this module carries the money-owed history that is not a normal credit account – and for a landlord, one category of it is more predictive than anything in the credit score. A civil judgment obtained by a prior landlord is not just a debt; it is a court’s finding about how a tenancy ended.

Reporting limits for public records

Under 15 U.S.C. section 1681c(a), the reportable windows differ by item type, and this is where landlord intuition is usually wrong:

Two of these routinely surprise people. Bankruptcy is ten years, not seven – a fact the seven-year shorthand obscures. And convictions have no federal expiry: the FCRA’s seven-year rule for “any other adverse item” explicitly excludes records of criminal convictions, so a conviction from twenty years ago is federally reportable. That is a federal floor, not the whole law. Numerous states and cities impose shorter lookbacks on criminal reporting, and fair chance ordinances restrict use regardless of reportability. Check your jurisdiction.

7. Eviction History

Direct answer: eviction history is the most predictive module in the report and the most frequently misread, because the field that matters is not “was there a filing” but “what happened to it.” An eviction search returns court filings. A filing is an allegation. Dispositions are where the truth lives.

The fields that separate a filing from an eviction

• Disposition. Dismissed, settled, judgment for plaintiff, judgment for defendant, or still pending. This is the single field that matters most, and it is the one summary tables drop.
• Money judgment. Was one entered, for how much, and is it satisfied? An unsatisfied rent judgment is a materially worse fact than a filing.
• Writ of possession. Did the court actually order removal? A writ means the process ran to completion.
• Type. Nonpayment is a money problem. A holdover, a nuisance, or a lease-violation case describes something else – and sometimes something worse.
• Which party filed. Occasionally the applicant is the plaintiff – a tenant who sued a landlord, often over habitability. That is not a negative fact about the applicant, and treating it as one is a live retaliation risk. See our habitability laws by state overview.
• Recency and count. One filing four years ago that was cured differs from three filings in five years. Pattern is the signal.

8. Criminal Background

Direct answer: this is the module with the largest gap between what landlords think it says and what it legally permits them to do. The data is uneven, the arrest-versus-conviction distinction is decisive, and blanket denials on criminal history are a fair housing exposure rather than a safety policy.

Arrest versus conviction

An arrest is a police action. A conviction is a court’s finding. Charges are dropped, cases are dismissed, and people are acquitted, all of which can leave an arrest record behind. HUD’s April 2016 guidance is explicit that screening on arrests that did not result in conviction cannot satisfy a housing provider’s burden, because an arrest does not prove that the underlying conduct occurred. Under 15 U.S.C. section 1681c(a)(2), arrest records are also subject to the seven-year limit (or the statute of limitations, whichever is longer), while convictions are not time-limited federally. If an arrest without conviction appears on your report, the correct action is to disregard it.

Why “national criminal database” oversells itself

There is no single national criminal record system available to screening companies. The so-called national database is a compilation assembled from state repositories, departments of correction, and other sources, and its coverage is genuinely uneven – some jurisdictions contribute little or nothing, and update frequency varies. That is precisely why the address trace matters: it drives county-level searches that fill the gaps. Read “national database: searched” as a broad first pass, not as proof of a clean record, and treat any hit from it as a lead to be confirmed at the courthouse rather than a fact to act on.

9. Sex Offender Registry and OFAC Watchlist

Direct answer: these two searches are near-universal, fast, and almost always clear – which is exactly why a hit demands verification rather than reflex. Both are name-matched against public lists, and name matching is imprecise.

10. Employment History (When Available)

Direct answer: this module lists the employers reported for the applicant when that data is available – and not every report includes it. It is reported history, not a call to an employer, and it does not show income. Pay is something you verify yourself, from documents the applicant gives you.

The decision math: rent-to-income and debt-to-income

Two ratios turn the income figure into a judgment. The income figure itself comes from documents you collect – pay stubs, an offer letter, bank statements – not from the screening report. Both ratios are conventions, not law.

Rent-to-income. The common standard is gross monthly income of at least three times the monthly rent. Suppose Jordan’s pay stubs document sixty-eight thousand dollars a year. That is five thousand six hundred sixty-seven dollars gross per month, which supports rent up to roughly one thousand eight hundred eighty-nine dollars under a 3x rule. On a sixteen-hundred-dollar unit, Jordan is at 28 percent of gross – comfortably inside the standard.

Debt-to-income. This one gets skipped and it should not. Jordan carries six hundred ninety dollars in monthly debt obligations. Add the sixteen-hundred-dollar rent and total obligations are two thousand two hundred ninety dollars against five thousand six hundred sixty-seven dollars gross – about 40 percent. That is workable but not roomy, and it explains the 43 percent credit utilization more honestly than the score does. The rent-to-income test alone would have missed it.

11. Residence History and Household Members

Direct answer: this module lists the addresses reported for the applicant and the other people reported at those addresses – the household members – and it is not a landlord reference. Nobody from the report calls a prior landlord. It tells you where the applicant has lived and with whom; how those tenancies went is something you learn by calling the landlord yourself.

Your own reference call: the questions that produce real answers

1. Can you confirm the tenancy dates and the rent amount? Start here. It verifies you are speaking to a real landlord, not the applicant’s friend. If the dates do not match the address trace, stop.
2. How many times was rent late, and how late? Ask for counts, not impressions.
3. Were any notices served? Specific and factual – a landlord who will not characterize a tenant will still confirm paperwork.
4. What was the unit’s condition at move-out, and was the deposit returned? The deposit answer is the most honest damage report you will get. See security deposit laws by state.
5. Would you rent to them again? Ask it last. The hesitation before the answer is often more informative than the answer.

12. Pet Screening

Direct answer: pet information is not part of our report (it comes from your own application and the documents the applicant gives you), and the legal line between a pet and an assistance animal is where landlords get into trouble.

13. The Red-Flag Warnings

Direct answer: this report does not approve or deny the applicant – when the searches turn up a red flag, it gives you a specific warning about each one, and the decision stays with you. The CFPB describes tenant screening reports as possibly containing a risk score or recommendation based on criteria selected by the landlord. This one carries neither: it names what was found and points you to the section where the record sits, so that your own written criteria – not a vendor’s formula – decide what each finding means.

14. What the Report Will Not Tell You

Direct answer: a screening report narrows uncertainty; it does not eliminate it, and knowing its blind spots is what separates a competent reader from a credulous one. Here is what is genuinely missing from the document above.

The thin-file problem deserves its own mention. Young applicants, recent immigrants, people emerging from a period of housing instability, and anyone who has lived deliberately outside the credit system will all produce a sparse report. A thin file is an absence of evidence, and treating it as evidence of risk systematically disadvantages exactly the groups fair housing law protects. When the file is thin, get more information – references, bank statements, a co-signer conversation – rather than reading the emptiness as a finding.

15. How Long Each Module Takes

Direct answer: results are delivered the same day, after an investigator reviews the report; the table shows what can complicate each section. The checks that depend on a person answering the phone – calling a prior landlord, confirming a job, reviewing income documents – are not part of the report; they are steps you take yourself, so start them the same day you order.

The practical scheduling lesson: order the report the day you receive a complete application, not the day before you want to sign. And if an applicant’s file is frozen at a bureau, that is not evasion – a credit freeze is a sensible security practice and it is their right. They lift it, you proceed.

16. Cost, Fees, and the State Caps That Bind Them

Direct answer: screening commonly runs roughly thirty to seventy-five dollars per adult applicant across the market, most states let the landlord pass it through as an application fee, and several states cap what you may charge. The caps are real, enforceable, and frequently misstated online – including on the page this one replaces.

Who pays, and is the fee refundable?

The applicant can pay: in most states the landlord may pass the cost to the applicant as an application or screening fee collected with the application. Refundability varies and is often misunderstood: several states require the landlord to refund any portion of the fee not actually spent on screening. California is explicit on this – if the landlord does not perform the screening, or spends less than the fee collected, the unused portion must be returned. The safest posture everywhere is to collect only what screening actually costs, itemize it, and refund the difference.

17. Portable and Reusable Screening Reports

Direct answer: a portable tenant screening report is one the applicant buys once and reuses across multiple applications, and as of 2026 seven states have laws about them – Colorado, Illinois, New York, Rhode Island, Maryland, Washington, and California. The laws differ enough that “do I have to accept it?” has seven answers.

The common thread across all seven: a thirty-day recency window, an FCRA-compliant provider requirement, and a disclosure duty. The common landlord objection – that a report the applicant ordered may be curated or altered – is legitimate, and the answer is to require delivery directly from the provider rather than as a file the applicant emails you. Where the law does not compel acceptance, accepting portable reports anyway is often good practice: it widens your applicant pool at no cost to you.

18. FCRA: Permissible Purpose, Accuracy, and Adverse Action

Direct answer: pulling a screening report puts you inside a federal statute, and three duties attach – having a permissible purpose before you pull, using the report accurately, and sending an adverse action notice when the report costs the applicant something.

Permissible purpose comes first

You may not obtain a consumer report just because you are curious. Under 15 U.S.C. section 1681b(a)(3)(F)(i), a user may obtain a report when it has a legitimate business need for the information in connection with a business transaction that is initiated by the consumer. A completed rental application is that initiation. No application, no permissible purpose. For a report that includes credit, the applicant’s signed authorization is also required – our credit check consent form collects it, and the rental application establishes the transaction.

Adverse action: the notice you must send

If information in the report causes you to deny the application, require a co-signer, demand a larger deposit, or offer less favorable terms, that is an adverse action, and 15 U.S.C. section 1681m(a) requires notice. Here is what the notice must actually contain – and note the element nearly every landlord omits:

• Notice of the adverse action itself – oral, written, or electronic. Written is what you can prove later.
• The numerical credit score you relied on, plus the accompanying score information required by 15 U.S.C. section 1681g(f) – the range, the date, the source, and the key factors that adversely affected it. This is section 1681m(a)(2), and it is the most commonly missed requirement.
• The name, address, and telephone number of the consumer reporting agency that furnished the report.
• A statement that the agency did not make the decision and cannot provide the specific reasons for it.
• Notice of the right to a free copy of the report from the agency, on request within sixty days, under 15 U.S.C. section 1681j(b).
• Notice of the right to dispute the accuracy or completeness of the information directly with the agency, under 15 U.S.C. section 1681i.

What the notice looks like

Below is an illustrative adverse action notice for our synthetic applicant, showing the required elements in place. It is an educational example, not legal advice or a form to file.

Accuracy, and the trap of acting on a hit you never opened

The screening agency owes duties of accuracy in preparing the report. Your duty is different but adjacent: use the report accurately. If a criminal or eviction hit is a name match your report itself flags as unconfirmed, acting on it as though it were established fact is both a legal risk and a factual error. The correct sequence is verify, then tell the applicant what you found, then decide. Applicants correct genuine mistakes surprisingly often, because the mistakes are common.

19. Fair Housing and Criminal Screening

Direct answer: the Fair Housing Act reaches screening policies that are neutral on their face but discriminatory in effect, and HUD’s April 2016 guidance applied that principle squarely to criminal history. This is the legal framework that makes “no criminal record, ever” an exposure rather than a policy.

HUD’s reasoning: because incarceration rates differ substantially by race and national origin, a blanket criminal-history exclusion can produce a discriminatory effect on protected classes even where the landlord harbors no discriminatory intent. Claims run through a three-step burden-shifting framework:

1. The plaintiff or HUD must show the criteria cause a disparate impact on a group protected because of race or national origin.
2. The burden shifts to the housing provider to prove the criteria are necessary to achieve a substantial, legitimate, nondiscriminatory interest – typically resident safety or property protection – supported by reliable evidence, not assertion.
3. If the provider carries that burden, the plaintiff may still prevail by showing a less discriminatory alternative would serve the same interest.

Two operational consequences follow directly. First, arrests without conviction cannot support a denial – HUD states plainly that an arrest does not prove conduct occurred, so an arrest-based policy cannot satisfy step two. Second, individualized assessment beats blanket rules, because a rule that considers the nature and severity of the offense, how much time has passed, and its actual relationship to tenancy is far more defensible at step two – and is often the less discriminatory alternative at step three.

Layered on top, many jurisdictions have fair chance housing laws that go further than federal law – restricting when criminal history may be asked about at all, limiting lookback periods, requiring individualized assessment by statute, or barring criminal screening outright for some housing. Check your state and local screening laws before criminal history informs any decision, and see our Fair Housing Act guide for the broader duties.

20. For Applicants: Reading Your Own Report

Direct answer: you can get your own tenant screening report, you should read it before a landlord does, and if a report cost you an apartment you are entitled to a free copy within sixty days.

Tenant screening companies are consumer reporting agencies, which means the FCRA gives you access rights to your file. Three routes:

• After a denial. The adverse action notice names the agency. Request your file from that agency within sixty days and it is free, under 15 U.S.C. section 1681j(b).
• Proactively. Request your file directly from the major tenant screening agencies. The CFPB maintains a list of consumer reporting companies that includes tenant screening providers.
• Your credit file. The credit portion comes from Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. Get those free at AnnualCreditReport.com, the only federally authorized free source.

Disputing an error

Dispute with the consumer reporting agency, not the landlord – the landlord cannot alter the file and has no mechanism to. Under 15 U.S.C. section 1681i the agency must generally reinvestigate within thirty days and must delete or correct information it cannot verify. Practical guidance:

1. Dispute in writing and keep a copy. A paper trail matters if the dispute goes badly.
2. Be specific. “This eviction is not mine – the case is from a county I have never lived in” beats “this is wrong.”
3. Attach proof. A court disposition showing dismissal, a satisfaction of judgment, a lease showing you lived elsewhere.
4. Dispute with every agency reporting the error. Fixing one file does not fix the others.
5. Ask for the corrected report to be sent to anyone who pulled it recently – you can request this.

If you are applying with an imperfect file, get ahead of it. Tell the landlord what they will find and what happened, in one short paragraph, with documentation. A landlord who learns about your eviction filing from you, along with the dismissal order, reads a very different story than a landlord who finds it in a report. And consider what you can offer – a larger deposit where state law permits, a co-signer, or a shorter initial term.

21. Errors, Mixed Files, and Common-Name Problems

Direct answer: screening report errors are not rare, and they concentrate in exactly the modules that do the most damage – criminal and eviction records. Understanding why makes you a better reader of any report.

The mechanism is matching. Credit tradelines are keyed to a Social Security number, so they match tightly. Court records generally are not – they are matched on name and, if you are lucky, a date of birth. So a search for a common name across a national aggregation can return records belonging to entirely different people. The result is a mixed file: someone else’s record sitting in your applicant’s report, looking exactly as authoritative as everything around it.

There is a self-interested reason to care. Denying a qualified applicant over someone else’s criminal record is not just unfair to them; it costs you a good tenant and leaves your unit vacant while you screen the next person. Accuracy is not only a compliance posture – it is how you avoid rejecting the applicant you wanted.

22. What You Do With the Report Afterward

Direct answer: the report is a dossier of sensitive personal information, and your duty to handle it carefully does not end when you make the decision. This is the step everyone skips.

A completed screening report contains a partial Social Security number, date of birth, address history, employer, and financial account detail – everything an identity thief needs. Sensible practice:

• Limit access to people who need it to make the decision. A screening report should not circulate to a co-owner “for interest.”
• Store it securely – encrypted or access-controlled if digital, locked if paper. Not an unsecured shared drive, and not an email inbox.
• Never email a full report to the applicant or anyone else in plain text.
• Dispose of it properly. The FTC’s Disposal Rule requires reasonable measures to protect against unauthorized access when disposing of consumer report information – shredding, burning, or secure erasure. Dropping reports in the recycling is a violation, not just a bad idea.
• Keep decision records – your written criteria, the report, your reasoning, and the adverse action notice – for the period your state’s fair housing complaint window and your own risk tolerance suggest.

23. Turning the Report Into a Decision

Direct answer: decide against criteria you wrote down before you screened, applied identically to every applicant, and documented. Everything above is input. This is the part that creates or eliminates your liability.

Write criteria first

Before you list the unit, write your standards: which score and what floor, income multiple, eviction rule stated in terms of dispositions rather than filings, criminal standard framed as individualized assessment, and how you will handle thin files, guarantors, and vouchers. Then apply them to every applicant in the same order. Consistency is not merely defensive – it is what makes your decisions actually predictive rather than a series of impressions.

Weight the modules honestly

Consider conditional approval before denial

A mixed file is not a binary. Where a report shows real capacity alongside real blemishes – which is precisely Jordan’s file – conditional approval often serves both sides better than a denial: a larger security deposit where state law permits it (deposit caps are state law and many states limit both the amount and what may be required), a qualified co-signer or guarantor, a shorter initial term that converts on performance, or automatic payments. Note carefully: each of these is itself an adverse action if the report drove it. Requiring a co-signer because of the score triggers the same section 1681m notice a denial would. Send it.

Jordan A. Sample: the decision

Assemble the file. Identity verified: Social Security number valid, no deceased-file match. FICO® Score 648, in the fair range and meeting a 640 floor. A credit file with one bad stretch fourteen-plus months back and clean since, no charge-offs, nine years of history. One satisfied medical judgment. One eviction filing, cured before hearing, dismissed, no judgment, tenancy continued. One seven-year-old fine-only misdemeanor with no apparent bearing on tenancy. Pay stubs showing income at 3.5x rent, DTI around 40 percent. The same employer reported for three years. Three reported addresses that match the application. And, from the landlord’s own reference call, a prior landlord who confirmed the late payments, returned the deposit in full, and would rent again.

Three independent sources – the credit grid, the eviction record, and your own call to the prior landlord – describe the same difficult stretch and the same recovery. That convergence is the finding. On written criteria of 640 score, 3x income, no eviction judgments, and individualized criminal assessment, Jordan qualifies – and a landlord who wants belt and braces can ask for a slightly higher deposit where lawful and send the adverse action notice that decision requires. A landlord filtering on “any eviction record” or “any criminal record” denies Jordan, keeps the unit vacant, and cannot articulate what risk was avoided. Same report. Different reader.

Order a Real Report Like the One Above

Same core searches, with your applicant’s actual data: identity and Social Security trace, credit with a soft-pull inquiry, nationwide eviction search, criminal and registry searches, and employment history, when available. If you take adverse action based on the report, you can download a free adverse-action notice form from our website.

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Sample Tenant Screening Report: FAQ

What does a tenant screening report look like?

A tenant screening report is a stack of separate search modules bound into one document. It opens with an identity block (name, masked Social Security number trace, date of birth confirmation, address history), then a credit section with a score and the underlying tradelines, then public records such as judgments and liens, then a nationwide eviction search, then criminal database and sex offender and OFAC watchlist searches, then residence history and household members, then employment history when it is available. Some reports close with a risk score or a recommendation calculated against criteria the landlord chose; the sample on this page does not – it closes with a specific warning about each red flag found. Each module is a separate database search, so each one can be clear, thin, or wrong on its own.

What is a good credit score for a tenant?

There is no legal or universal cutoff. In common market practice many landlords set a floor near 620 to 650 for standard rentals and near 700 for competitive or premium units, but that is convention, not law. The score matters less than the pattern beneath it: an applicant at 640 with a clean 24-month payment grid and stable income is usually a safer tenant than an applicant at 720 carrying three fresh delinquencies. Whatever floor you choose, write it down before you screen and apply it identically to every applicant, because an inconsistently applied score cutoff is how a fair housing complaint starts.

Which credit score does the sample report show?

A FICO® Score, on FICO’s 300 to 850 scale. FICO groups scores into five ranges: poor (300-579), fair (580-669), good (670-739), very good (740-799), and exceptional (800-850). The sample applicant’s 648 is in the fair range, where the payment history beneath the number matters more than the number itself. Other scoring models, such as a VantageScore or the rental-specific scores some screening products show, are built differently, so never compare a number from one model with a number from another; a 650 in one is not a 650 in the other.

How long does a tenant screening report take?

Results are delivered the same day, after an investigator reviews the report. It covers credit, national criminal, sex offender, OFAC watchlist, eviction search, identity and Social Security number trace, residence history and household members, and employment history when it is available. Checks that depend on a person answering a phone or an email – calling a prior landlord, reviewing the applicant’s income documents – are not part of the report; they are steps the landlord takes, and they commonly take 24 to 72 hours.

How far back does a tenant screening report go?

It depends on the item, under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, 15 U.S.C. section 1681c(a). Civil suits, civil judgments, and arrest records may be reported for seven years or until the governing statute of limitations expires, whichever period is longer. Paid tax liens run seven years from the date of payment. Collection accounts and any other adverse item run seven years. Bankruptcies run ten years from the date of entry of the order for relief. Records of criminal convictions have no federal time limit at all and may be reported indefinitely, though many states and cities impose their own lookback limits that are stricter than federal law.

When does a landlord have to send an adverse action notice?

Whenever information in the screening report causes you to take an adverse action – denying the application, requiring a co-signer, demanding a larger deposit, or offering less favorable lease terms. Under 15 U.S.C. section 1681m(a) the notice must state the adverse action, disclose the numerical credit score you used along with the required score information, give the name, address, and telephone number of the consumer reporting agency that furnished the report, state that the agency did not make the decision and cannot explain the reasons, and tell the applicant of the right to a free copy of the report from the agency within sixty days under 15 U.S.C. section 1681j(b) and the right to dispute inaccurate information under 15 U.S.C. section 1681i.

How much does a tenant screening report cost and who pays?

Across the market, screening commonly runs roughly thirty to seventy-five dollars per adult applicant depending on how many modules are included, and in most states the landlord may pass that cost to the applicant as an application or screening fee. Several states cap it. New York limits cumulative background and credit check fees to the actual cost or twenty dollars, whichever is less, under Real Property Law section 238-a(1)(b). California sets a base cap of thirty dollars per applicant under Civil Code section 1950.6, adjustable annually for the Consumer Price Index since January 1, 1998, and requires an itemized receipt. Always confirm your own state and city rule before charging.

Can a landlord deny an applicant based on criminal history alone?

Often not, and never safely as a blanket rule. HUD’s April 2016 guidance applies the Fair Housing Act’s disparate impact framework to criminal screening: because incarceration rates differ sharply by race and national origin, a categorical criminal-history ban can produce a discriminatory effect even without discriminatory intent. Under the three-step burden-shifting test, once a disparate impact is shown the housing provider must prove with reliable evidence that the criteria are necessary to achieve a substantial, legitimate, nondiscriminatory interest. HUD states that screening on arrests that did not lead to conviction cannot meet that burden, because an arrest is not proof of conduct. Many fair chance jurisdictions restrict the practice further.

How do I get a copy of my own tenant screening report and dispute an error?

Ask the consumer reporting agency named in the adverse action notice – not the landlord, who cannot correct the file. If you were denied housing because of the report you are entitled to a free copy from that agency within sixty days under 15 U.S.C. section 1681j(b). Read every module, because errors cluster in name-matched searches like criminal and eviction records where a common name can pull another person’s record into your file. Dispute anything inaccurate directly with the agency under 15 U.S.C. section 1681i, which generally requires reinvestigation within thirty days and correction or deletion of information that cannot be verified.

What is a portable or reusable tenant screening report?

It is a screening report the applicant orders once and reuses across multiple rental applications, so they pay a single fee instead of one per property. As of 2026 seven states have portable tenant screening report laws – Colorado, Illinois, New York, Rhode Island, Maryland, Washington, and California – and they differ sharply. Colorado, under House Bill 23-1099, bars a landlord from charging an application fee when the applicant supplies a compliant report. New York requires the fee to be waived when the applicant provides a background or credit check conducted within the past thirty days. Washington does not compel acceptance but requires a landlord advertising rentals on a website to state its acceptance policy there.

Does a tenant screening credit check hurt the applicant’s credit score?

Not when the report uses a soft inquiry. A hard inquiry is recorded on the file, is visible to other lenders, and can shave a few points from a score. A soft inquiry does not affect the score and is not shown to other lenders. Tenant Screening Background Check uses a soft-pull credit inquiry, which matters most to an applicant who is applying to several properties in the same month and would otherwise stack hard inquiries while doing nothing wrong.

What will a tenant screening report not tell you?

More than most landlords assume. It does not show rent payment history unless a prior landlord reported it to a bureau, which most never do, so a perfect rent record can be invisible. It does not show cash income, informal or family loans, or a roommate’s finances. It does not show an eviction that was settled before filing, or one filed in a court that does not release records electronically. It does not show why a negative mark exists – a medical collection and a defaulted credit card look identical in the data. And it does not tell you whether someone will be a good neighbor. The report narrows uncertainty; it does not remove it.

Is the sample applicant on this page a real person?

No. “Jordan A. Sample” is entirely fictional, invented for this walkthrough. Every name, address, account number, case number, employer, dollar figure, and date in the sample report above is fabricated for illustration. No real applicant’s data appears on this page, and nothing here was drawn from a live report. Real screening reports contain applicant-specific information furnished by consumer reporting agencies and are governed by the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

Related Landlord and Screening Guides

• How to screen tenants – the full step-by-step workflow this report feeds.
• Understanding credit report codes – decode every rating, ECOA, and status code.
• FCRA compliance for landlords – the federal rules for using a screening report.
• Adverse action notice guide – the notice a report-driven denial requires.
• Minimum credit score for renting – setting a defensible score floor.
• How to verify tenant income – verifying income yourself, from documents.
• How to accept or reject a rental application – deciding defensibly.
• Fair Housing Act guide – the anti-discrimination duties around screening.
• Tenant screening laws by state – fee caps, lookbacks, and fair chance rules.
• Free rental application – what the applicant completes first.
• Credit check consent form – the authorization required before you pull a report that includes credit.
• All free landlord forms – the complete form library.

About the Author

Published by Tenant Screening Background Check · Editorial Team

Established 2004. Our editorial team has spent two decades helping landlords and property managers read screening reports and run lawful, FCRA-compliant tenant screening across all 50 states. We translate the modules and the federal rules into a process you can actually follow – and we cite the statute, not a summary of it.

Updated 2026

Legal Disclaimer

The sample report on this page is illustrative and depicts a fictional applicant. It contains no real personal data. Actual screening reports contain applicant-specific information furnished by consumer reporting agencies under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. This page is general information, not legal advice, and does not create an attorney-client relationship. Federal citations are to the Fair Credit Reporting Act, 15 U.S.C. sections 1681b, 1681c, 1681g, 1681i, 1681j, and 1681m; state citations are to New York Real Property Law section 238-a and California Civil Code section 1950.6, which may be amended. Tenant screening is also governed by the federal Fair Housing Act, HUD guidance, and state and local fair housing, fair chance, and screening-fee laws that vary by jurisdiction and change over time. Verify current requirements for your state and city and consult a qualified attorney before adopting screening criteria or taking adverse action.