So I have an apartment coming open middle of next month and I put an ad on Zillow ahead of time.

Even though it is the holiday season I have been slowly getting inquiries about the place.

I have a canned response that tells them all to go to my website for additional info and to fill out my application if interested.

Always get a few deadbeats. I did get one that looked great to begin with. I told him to fill out my application. He said he would and never did. His Zillow app looked good. He also said he had another person to live in the apartment. That is my guess as to why he didn't fill out my app.

Well I got another Zillow application this morning at six. Sent the canned response and went on with my morning. Then I decided to look her name up on our case search site.

Three evictions since 2021. The latest just started this month.

Criminal misdemeanor filed this month (assisting a criminal)

Felony battery in the presence of a child (April of this year)

Two collections suits where she still owes over $3,300

So because I was a little curious I opened her Zillow application.

Background report summary:

Housing Court Record

0

Criminal Record

0

Wow, such an extravagant fail!

The prospect does not have a common name. I also got her middle name. The address she used on the application shows up on the criminal cases.

Thanks for that review.

Not that it would do anything, but you might send that review to Zillow.

What I would like to know is where do these credit score ranges come from? Had one that said the credit was 620-660 on the zillow lead sheet so it would have been alright, but in real life it was below 580.

zero,

Welcome to the 20th Century!

Gotta love technology when it helps us weed out the baddies.

2 small notes:

Indiana law (2022) now allows/requires? the judge to SEAL (remove from public record) any eviction where the person moves out before the hearing. or "says" they moved out. So she might have even MORE evictions that are now hidden!

And I tell all LLs - a Zillow app is an app. We must consider it the same as a paper app. So we log them on to our spreadsheet, save a digital copy, makes notes about why we let it denied or sent them an invite to complete our own online app.

We only trust the low credit scores from Z.

Brad, I think the deadbeat still has to do a few things to get the eviction expunged? Also if they end up owing damages it shows, for now. They can get them expunged after they have paid everything off, which as you know rarely happens.

Ray, I think they just use one place to get the credit score and it is very liberal in the numbers. At least it still has a number of the open and closed accounts which include the number of late pays.

Not surprised but the obviously DQ'd person never responded or filled out one of my applications.

Go figure.

Little off topic but the kids that are moving did it yesterday I guess. They claim they will be back to final clean today.

I just find it hard to believe how incorrect the Zillow application is. I have seen similar results in the past as well.

No way will I trust them, but as mentioned above they can allow one to DQ a person without doing anything else.

I only use them for the ad. Full stop. The deadbeats love Zillow applications and prescreening because it's basically all on the honor system. Not to be used for prescreening nor for applications.

The lady that is interested in my apartment transferred to a different store from a town farther away.

Nobody willingly moves during the holiday season. You will have to put in a lot of time and work to find a good tenant at this time of year.

It is Zillow's job to find a place to live for their clients. They are not working for the landlord. On their application, they do not verify anything. Whatever the tenant puts down, is what you are going to see.

Their credit scores are generous, but I am running my own screening anyway so that doesn't matter to me, except that if their credit score is in the marginal area where I will normally check a tenant extra carefully, I know that they are a reject so I can just screen them out and not bother.

I've never had a Zillow app show ANY thing for criminal or evictions.

I find that very strange.

That said, I find their credit report helpful.

And, I get better prospect quality from them than from FB.

Surprisingly I got two Zillow apps late last night. I looked at them and they both showed one eviction each.

Just had another one come thru today.

It showed an eviction from 2021 but didn't show the decided cases with meth.

Also didn't show driving with a suspended license. That is an automatic DQ for me now. Think about it, in this person's case they got popped with drugs in their system, on their person all while driving. They lost their license because of it. Then they get caught driving with no license which means no insurance either.