Which of these 2 prospects would you pick for a $1800/month 3 bedroom rental and why? Thanks.

Prospect #1

- 35 years old single male bus driver

- He makes $7900/mo. Has this job for 3 years

- Credit score 639

- 2 kids come and stay on weekend (weekend custody)

- Slow to respond when requesting for extra info

Prospect #2

- 35 years old husband works at Seven Eleven as assistant manager

- 32 years old wife works as a bartender

- He makes $2800/mo. Has this job for 5 years

- She makes $3500/mo. Has this job for 1 year

- He has no credit. It was blocked due to identity thief (he said)

- Her credit score 782

- 1 kid lives with them

Remove the fact that one is a male. Also the ages are meet. Legally these should never come into play.

If he is slow to respond about getting into the place he will be slow to respond about potential problems you have down the line with him.

For me I will DQ someone who leaves something off the application, unless they are otherwise perfect. My app is only 2 pages if printed, and that includes a section for an additional applicant.

For prospect #1, define slow to respond.

Prospect #2 would be out. Not enough income from husband. He is either lying about credit and/or he doesn't want you to see how bad it is. The quick response could possibly be because they are desperate. Either way, they are not providing all the required information. Red flags.

When it comes to getting tenants credit, are you pulling the credit reports yourself, or letting the tenant provide it?

In other words, how are you receiving the credit information?

Thank you everyone for you reply.

zero[IN], same here. My application is only 2 pages. I tend to not choose people who leave something blanks in the application... The second guy didn't refuse to give his credit report. I pulled credit reports myself. However his was blocked due to identity thief (his story).

6x6[IN], Prospect #1 filled out the application and paid the fee. He told me that he would send me his proof of income. A week passed, nothing happen. I had to call and text him to get his proof of income 2 days later

Thank you everyone for your reply.

LisaFL[FL], I'm also leaning toward Prospect#1 who makes higher income. According to his credit report, he has 1 collection and has two 30 day late payments in the last 3 years. Not ideal but I feel safer with higher income (Prospect#1) than Prospect#2. What bother me more is the response speed of Prospect#1.

6x6[TN], good to know. I let him know that not being able to see his credit report is a deal breaker. We even tried to pull his report from annualcreditreports.com by having him over the phone answering 3 private questions to gain access to the report. It didn't work. Hence he asked to have his mom co-sign and she agreed.

Tell #2 to unfreeze his credit.

Ditto mapleleaf.

he should be able to unfreeze it long enough to get a report. Then he can freeze it again.

Thank you everyone for your reply.

wmh[NC], agree. I also favor the bus driver more because he makes enough.

Mapleaf18[NY], Glad to know that the credit can be unfreezed by him.

You freeze your credit report online, You un-freeze your credit report online. He can unfreeze long enough for you to check it. Either he is pretty ignorant about how to manage his credit or he really really does not want you to see his credit report. No credit report is always a hard pass and it doesn't matter what the excuse is.

Oregonwoodsmoke[ID], thanks for confirming that freezing and unfreezing is as simple as a few clicks on the screen.

In my area (class C), it takes about 15 applications to find a decent one. For the last unit that I leased, I went through about 10 applications. The unit before that (last year), I went through 30 applications without finding a good one.

It's been vacant for only a few weeks. Experience taught me that 80% of the prospect traffic is around the first few weeks. After that, the traffic is much lighter.