Apartments and credit checks

[Howlingcoyote]

It may be moot, but I'm not sure of that.  When I applied for my current apartment three years back, which is a mid-range, average kind of complex, they told me at that time my score was around 500 (which means they got a FICO or FAKO of some sort) and that there would be a high deposit.

Everything else RobertEG wrote is on track.  I don't think it hurts to ask "Why do you need to pull my credit report?"

---

@RobertEG wrote:

They are not extending credit, they are likely looking for certain information, such as evictions or indebetness to anothter landlord.

Your score, and thus any issue of impact of other hard inquiries, may be moot.

Ask the landlord what they are looking for.........

---

[Marcos8]

not sure exactly what they look for but I do know that for my current apartment my application with my wife was turned down because she had a bad score / report at the time. The property manager resubmitted the app with me as the primary and my wife was just listed on the lease as an occupant and the application was approved. 

Edited to to add that the baddies on my wife's file were not related in any way to any landlord/ tenant issues. 

[kebeneezer88]

Yes, I used to lease apartments so I know score matters, as well as any evictions.

My ?? was do "they" the all knowing OZ credit bureaus only count them as "one" hit. No one seems to know. Probably best then to not apply to too many. Expensive anyway with app fees.

[Anonymous]

We recently went through this process. All the potential landlords pulled out credit. Only one was a hard pull. The others were soft pulls via Tranunion Saferent or Experian. While they were soft pulls they were fake (Vantage 3) scores. I went into one application thinking I had a score of over 600 on my TU only to find out they pulled a vantage 3 score of 564. They wanted over 600 so we didn't get it

What I learned is they want to see how timely you pay your bills as well as any evictions. Collections are the least of their worries.

Ask the landlord the specific screening process. I think more private landlords go the soft pull route whereas the management companies do a hard pull. Unfortunately I don't think they follow the same rules as a mortgage where it only shows up as 1 pull in x number of days