Rental Application Denial Letter: Fill & Download for Free

Check your local jurisdiction. Who knows what some wacky jurisdiction like San Francisco or Santa Cruz may have enacted. Generally speaking, you can require a minimum credit score, as long as you apply it in a non-discriminatory way to all applicants.However, if you deny an application due to a credit report, you are required to notify the applicant. “ According to the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), you must provide a rental application denial letter if you take an adverse action against an applicant based in whole or in part on any consumer reports. Put simply, if a credit report, credit score, background, or eviction report factored into your adverse action decision (even a little bit), then you must notify the applicant” Rental Application Denial Letter | RentSpree

Here’s what I think it is:When a landlord obtains your permission to run credit and background checks, for a rental application, they work with a specialty credit reporting agency, a company which pulls not only your credit score, but other databases, including arrest and criminal conviction records. If your husband has been arrested and/or convicted of a crime, that would show up, and can be a grounds for denial. Either way, you’ll receive a letter in the mail (or you should, legally), within a week or so, letting you know why you were denied. There’s no such thing as “criminal credit” but there are criminal background checks, and that’s what happened here.

Should all or part of a rental, application fee, charged by landlords and management companies be refunded if the application is turned down?For the United States:No.The costs incurred to check the background and credit of an applicant is real and will be borne by the applicant. The landlord should provide the general criteria required to qualify in terms of a credit score, minimum income, and the tolerance of eviction records. court judgments, and criminal history.With this information in mind, the applicant can make a decision if they want to proceed with paying the fee or not. If an applicant knows that they have poor credit, evictions, and/or don’t meet the minimum income requirements, then why are they applying in the first place?If there are reasons, the applicant will receive a letter advising they why the application was denied and the opportunity to follow up with the source of the adverse information such as:Story Time:In the case of this applicant of mine, the woman was clearly provided with criteria of the minimum credit score and that open evictions and/or currently delinquent accounts would result in denial of the application.Here is the summary of the credit information:7 accounts in active collections and 40 (YES FORTY!) credit accounts currently delinquent! The credit score was 411, a record low in my 20+ years as a landlord. The very, very unfortunate thing is that 38 of the 40 delinquent accounts are for the US Department of Education loans. Each account ranged from a couple thousand dollars to a little over $10,000 originally, now each of them are nearly double in the amount owed. Likely due to late fees and accrued interest. There is a total of about $100,000 owed just on the education loans. These will never, ever go away. Even bankruptcy won’t erase those accounts.When I provided the her with the application denial letter, she acted shocked. She claimed that she had no knowledge of having all of these delinquent accounts. I asked if there was some sort of error. If maybe her identity had been stolen and someone opened all of these school loans in her name. Nope, she admitted that they were hers, she applied for them term by term as she got her degree, but she thought that they would drop off of her credit after 7 years and it had been at least that long since she had stopped paying them.Not to be outdone with the horrible credit, she had 3 eviction orders and 3 matching Forcible Entry/Detainer orders. This meant that she stuck in the places until the order came from the court for the Sheriff to throw her out.But wait, that’s not all. She also had an outstanding civil judgement for about $5,000 and another civil court case that was pending where the plaintiff matched one of the Forcible Entry/Detainer judgments.After reviewing all of this information with her, she asked me if I’d still rent to her. (WHAT?!?!) I said no. I told her that I had explained the criteria for tenancy before she applied and since she didn’t meet the criteria that her application was denied.She got weepy-eyed and begged for me to give her a chance. She didn’t have anywhere to go because she was being evicted from her current place. She pleaded that she was about to be homeless. In my head I’m thinking that she should start getting comfortable with living in her car, but as I’m looking out the window at her Lexus RX, I remember the Lexus Financial account in her credit report was overdue by 120+ days with a balance of over $30k, so that option was probably going to go away soon too.To wrap it all up and put a bow on it, she had the diamond-studded brass balls to ask me to refund her application fee since I was denying her application. I pointed to her application where she had signed the terms that clearly stated that the application fee was non-refundable under any circumstances.—-This woman is a Professional Tenant of the Pacific Heights (1990) - IMDb variety and any landlord will rue the day they hand keys to her. (If you are a landlord and you haven’t watched Pacific Heights, do.) I had contacted my attorney about the application results and she reviewed my Adverse Action letter to make sure it was absolutely compliant with the law before I gave it to the applicant. My attorney warned me to be very careful about what I said and assume that I’d be recorded. She elaborated that if I didn’t follow the denial process to the T that I was very likely to be sued by her. Even doing everything right, my attorney told me to be prepared that she may sue anyway just to extort me for a few thousand dollars. I told my attorney that I’d pay her $10k to defend me before I ever gave that woman a cent.This all transpired 4 months ago and so far I haven’t been served. Hopefully she’s moved on to making someone else’s life a living hell and forgotten about me. I do wonder if the Lexus repo man has caught up with her yet.