Many Americans are becoming more critical of the type of information they are receiving. Whether it is checking food labeling for GMOs, gluten and sugar or the many articles coining the phrase fake news, we cannot stop there. Regardless of what excuse a rental applicant provides, a property manager should never accept a pre-pulled credit report from an applicant. Although the credit report the applicant provides may look legitimate and even if it was pulled within a few days, it is best not to risk it. That's due to the fact that the algorithm used to calculate your applicant's score depends on the purpose of the report (i.e., auto loan, bank loan, etc.) and the fact that an applicants final rental credit score could vary. However new standardized credit reporting procedures took effect July 1, 2017 which applied to existing and new records. Thus property managers can now expect tenant applicant credit scores to be currently overinflated, not because the applicants have become better at paying bills on time but because of a change in the information used to calculate the scores. The nations three major credit reporting companies Equifax, Experian and TransUnion use information from public records about tax liens, civil judgments and bankruptcies when computing peoples credit scores. But sometimes there are mix-ups, and the wrong persons credit gets dinged. Now the companies have agreed to stop listing information about liens and judgments in credit reports unless they have certain data connecting the public record more solidly to an individual, according to the Consumer Data Industry Assn. Bankruptcy records already contain the required data so their reporting will NOT be impacted. What's changed recently? Credit reporting firms can no longer include information about tax liens or civil court judgments in credit reports unless those records include a name, an address and a Social Security number or date of birth to match them to a specific consumer file. The new standards also require the firms to update public record information in their files every 90 days. According to LexisNexis, about half of liens and nearly all civil judgments (96% of them) dont meet the new credit reporting identification criteria! Take careful note that a public record appearing on a credit report can bring down an otherwise strong score by as much as 150 points! That means that a tenant whose public record is not longer being reported will have a credit score a whopping 150 points higher now than he/she had prior to the credit reporting procedures change.

1. Will this impact tenant credit decisions for property managers? If so, what extra burden will the new credit reporting standards place on property managers?

2. What scams might some unscrupulous tenants try to use during the tenant screening stage?

For Real Property Mgmt