By Gary E. Wilson, President & Designated Broker, Wilson Management, Inc.
Most landlords who run into trouble with screening did not set out to break a rule. They set out to find a good tenant, made a series of reasonable-seeming decisions along the way, and ended up with a process that cannot be defended if anyone asks.
Washington does not leave screening to discretion. The state requires that applicants be told, in writing and before screening begins, what will be looked at and what will disqualify them. Seattle goes further and constrains which qualified applicant you may choose. Getting the order right is most of the work.
This is the sequence that works, and the reasoning behind each step. For the service itself, see Tenant Screening for Single-Family Rentals.
Step 1: Write your criteria before you advertise
The criteria have to exist before an application does. That is not merely good practice — it is the legal requirement, and it is also the only way to apply a standard evenly, because a rule written after you have met the applicants is a rule written about them.
Under RCW 59.18.257, prospective tenants must be told in writing what information you require to screen them, what criteria may result in denial, how to contact the consumer reporting agency if the application is denied, and whether you accept a comprehensive reusable tenant screening report. The notice must state what constitutes a complete application and the minimum threshold for each screening criterion.
That last requirement is the one most landlords miss, because it forces specificity. "Good credit" is not a threshold. "Stable income" is not a threshold. A number is.
Typical criteria include a minimum income relative to rent, a minimum credit score or a defined standard for housing-related payment history, verifiable rental history, and whatever background standard applies in your jurisdiction.
Step 2: Give the notice before you screen
The notice goes to applicants before screening, not with the denial. An applicant is entitled to know the standard they are being measured against before they pay an application fee.
Practically, this means the criteria appear in the listing or are provided at the point of application, and the applicant receives them in writing. Where you use a consumer report, the notice identifies the screening company.
Step 3: Take applications on a defined basis
How you accept applications matters more in some jurisdictions than others.
In Seattle, the first-in-time requirements mean you must offer tenancy to the first qualified applicant who submits a completed application. You cannot collect a weekend of applications and select your favourite. That makes timestamping and a clear definition of "complete" essential — and it means your criteria must be right before the listing goes live, because you have no discretion afterwards to correct a vague threshold.
Elsewhere in the region you have more latitude in whom you select, but exercising it inconsistently between applicants is precisely what creates fair housing exposure.
King County has also adopted fair chance housing rules restricting the use of criminal history. Income standards, rental history, references and credit screening remain lawful when applied consistently and disclosed in your written criteria.
Step 4: Verify, do not merely collect
This is where screening either works or does not. Documents an applicant supplies are claims, not proof.
Income. Verified against your published threshold, at source where possible rather than solely from documents handed to you. Self-employed and contract applicants are verified differently — returns and bank records rather than an employer call — which is a difference in method, not a lower standard.
Rental history. Contact the previous landlord as well as the current one. A current landlord who wants a difficult resident to leave has an incentive to be generous. A previous landlord has none.
Credit. Read as a pattern rather than a single number. What the report shows about housing-related payment behaviour tells you more than the score alone.
Identity. Confirm the applicant is the person the report describes. This is the step that catches the small number of applications that are outright fraudulent.
Apply the same checks at the same depth to every applicant for that property. Running a deeper check on one applicant than another is how a defensible process becomes an indefensible one.
Step 5: Decide against the criteria, and record it
The decision is a comparison between what you verified and what you published. Record which criteria were applied, what each returned, and the outcome.
The test worth applying: could someone reconstruct this decision in eighteen months from the file alone, without anyone's memory? In a portfolio with staff turnover, the memory will not be there.
Step 6: Serve the adverse action notice
Any denial requires a written adverse action notice. Where a consumer report contributed to the decision, the applicant is entitled to know which agency supplied it, so they can obtain and dispute their own file.
This is not optional and it is not a courtesy. It is also the step most often skipped by landlords who simply stop responding to an applicant they have declined.
The mistakes that cause actual problems
Waiving the standard for someone likeable. The single most common route to a fair housing complaint. Once a criterion has been waived for one applicant and enforced against another, it is discretionary — and a discretionary standard applied to two people from different protected classes is the fact pattern a complaint is built on.
Screening informally first. Deciding from a phone call or a showing who is worth processing, before criteria are applied, reintroduces exactly the subjectivity the process exists to remove.
Different depth for different applicants. Running a full check on one and a cursory check on another.
Treating an accommodation request as a screening question. Reasonable accommodation and assistance animal requests are governed by fair housing law and are not pet or preference questions.
No record. A perfectly fair process you cannot evidence is, when challenged, indistinguishable from an unfair one.
What screening cannot do
Screening improves the odds. It does not guarantee a tenancy. A well-qualified resident can lose a job, separate from a partner or fall ill, and nothing in a credit report predicts that.
What it reliably catches are the avoidable failures — the applicant with two prior evictions, the stated income that does not exist, the person who is not who the report describes. Those are the tenancies that end expensively, and a documented process is genuinely good at preventing them.
Setting criteria that are defensible
The criteria themselves deserve thought, because they have to be specific enough to satisfy the statute and defensible enough to survive scrutiny.
Income. A stated multiple of rent is the conventional approach. What matters is that the multiple is a number, applied identically, and that you have decided in advance how you treat non-salaried income, guarantors and multiple applicants combining incomes.
Credit. Either a minimum score or a defined standard tied to housing-related payment behaviour. A blanket score cutoff is simple to apply; a standard that looks at housing payment history is often more predictive. Either works — an undefined "good credit" does not.
Rental history. A defined period of verifiable history, with a stated position on applicants who have none. First-time renters are a real category and refusing them ad hoc, without a written standard, is not defensible.
Background. Applied within the limits of the jurisdiction, which in this region is not uniform.
Occupancy. A stated standard consistent with applicable occupancy guidance, rather than a number chosen per property.
The test for each: could you apply this to the next ten applicants without exercising judgement? If it requires judgement, it will be applied inconsistently, and inconsistency is what creates exposure.
What to do with a marginal application
Marginal applications are where good processes break, because the temptation to improvise is strongest.
The defensible options are the ones written into your criteria beforehand — a guarantor on defined terms, a larger deposit within statutory limits, or a co-signer, each available to any applicant who qualifies for it on the same basis.
The indefensible option is deciding case by case whether this particular applicant seems trustworthy enough to bend for. That is the decision that, repeated a few times across applicants from different backgrounds, produces the pattern a complaint is built on.
If a condition is acceptable for one marginal applicant, it should be acceptable for all of them. Write it down before you need it.
Where to go next
If you would rather this ran on a documented process applied identically every time, that is what we do — see Single-Family Property Management or request a free rental analysis.
For the wider legal framework, our Washington Landlord-Tenant Law Guide covers the surrounding requirements, and Seattle Landlord Laws covers the city's additional rules.
This article is general information, not legal advice. Confirm current requirements against the statute or with counsel before applying them.
Sources
About the author
Gary E. Wilson is the President and Designated Broker of Wilson Management, Inc., which he has led in serving property owners across Bellevue and the Greater Seattle area since 1982. With more than 40 years of hands-on experience, Gary helps owners protect and maximize the value of single-family, multi-family, and commercial properties.
More about Gary → · Get a free rental analysis →