How to Legally Reject a Rental Application

As a landlord, you may reject a rental application for many reasons as long as you abide by the Fair Housing Act. You must not reject an applicant due to race, national origin, familial status, disability or sex. However, you may turn applicants away if you have a good reason. Follow some guidelines when rejecting applicants to stay on the right side of the law.

Instructions

1. Prepare a standard applicant rating form and fill one out for every person who applies to live on your property. Design it to fit your personal needs but include legal reasons for rejecting their application. Consider some of the following for your rating form.

2. Perform a credit check on the applicant. You may reject anyone on the basis that their past payment history is not good. If you do, however, by law, you must provide them with the contact information for the credit service you used and inform them that your decision was based (at least partially), upon the report.

3. Call their references and former landlords. Any negative feedback from one of them is a legal reason to reject the applicant. If they had a former eviction from a rental property, you are well within your rights to turn them down.

4. Reject an applicant if they are not a legal United States citizen. You cannot turn them down based on their race or where they were born, but if they are in this country illegally, you may reject their application and remain within the guidelines of the Fair Housing Act.

5. Turn down an applicant because his income level does not meet the criteria you set for being able to afford the payments. However, you must use the combined income of all parties who intend to rent the premises when reaching this determination.

6. Say no to pets. Reject an applicant who has pets if you have a no-animal policy. Animals can be a financial risk to a landlord if their owners do not provide the opportunity for them to go out and relieve themselves or if they chew up furnishings in an apartment.

7. Pay to have a criminal check run on the applicant, and you have legal grounds to reject her if there are any convictions on her record. Even if the conviction is for a minor infraction, you can legally use the defense that the applicant was not always a law-abiding person.

8. Send applicants with more family members than two-per-bedroom somewhere else if you don't think they would have enough room to live comfortably. This is your call, but you may legally reject a family with more than two children per bedroom. However, under the Fair Housing Act, you may not reject an applicant because he is a single parent.

Tips & Warnings

• Write all your reasons on your rating sheet and store it, along with any credit check or criminal check forms, for at least two years to protect yourself from a lawsuit.