Under FCRA guidelines, a prospective tenant is supposed to be entitled to a free copy of their credit report if some information in there was used in the decision to reject them for tenancy. As Landlords, how do we notify the credit reporting agencies to allow these people to access their reports? It seems like it’s virtually impossible to actually contact anyone at these agencies unless you pay the money for their report and get the “secret” phone number to call.
The agency that provides your report will also provide a FCRA-compliant letter that the applicant can use to get a copy. If you don’t’ use a credit report in your evaluation of an applicant, then you are not required to send an FCRA letter.
Don’t forget that a FCRA letter is required whenever information in the credit report is used for any adverse action, not just rejection. That includes charging a higher rent or deposit, requiring a co-signer, or using a m2m agreement when lease is your standard practice.
Thanks for the help. I appreciate it!
My credit report company asks if I accept or reject, and if I say reject, they give me a letter to print off to give to the applicant.
We’re going to get set up with a credit report company in the next few months. Thanks to being in transition, we haven’t been able to get our home office inspected to be able to pull the full reports. We’ll be at our next location for almost three years and will get things set up the right way. So far we’ve been able to reject propesctive tenants just based off things we found on the county court website.