You’ve got a rental sitting vacant. An application comes in. The person seems great on the phone, says they have “really good credit,” and you’re tempted to just… go with your gut.
We get it. But gut feelings have cost landlords thousands of dollars in unpaid rent and attorney fees. We’ve watched it happen more than once.
So if you’re a rental property owner trying to figure out what a credit check actually tells you, what score to require, and where the line is between “good enough” and “too risky,” this post covers all of it. We pull from 25 years of managing properties across the Austin area, and a lot of these lessons came the hard way, through our clients’ experiences.
In This Guide
What a Rental Credit Check Actually Shows
A credit check for rental purposes is not the same thing as what a bank looks at before writing a mortgage. Landlords care about different things.
Here’s what a proper landlord-grade credit report shows:
- Payment history: Whether the applicant pays bills on time, and how late when they miss
- Outstanding balances: Active debt load relative to available credit
- Collections: Unpaid accounts sent to collectors, including medical, utility, and old rent
- Eviction records: Court judgments from prior eviction filings, which show up as civil judgments
- Bankruptcies: Active or recent filings, which signal serious financial instability
- Inquiries: How often they’ve been applying for credit recently
The eviction piece matters more than most owners realize. We had a Cedar Park owner go through Trend’s application process and discover that an applicant’s credit file showed a Williamson County eviction judgment the applicant had simply left off their rental history form. Without a formal credit pull, that would have slipped right through.
Why You Can’t Let Applicants Submit Their Own Credit Report
This comes up constantly. An applicant offers to show you a screenshot from Credit Karma, or they forward a PDF they pulled from one of the free services. It looks legitimate. It shows an 700+ score. And it’s essentially worthless for your purposes.
Here’s why. Consumer-facing credit reports are not tri-merge reports. They don’t always include all three bureaus. They can be edited. They don’t reflect landlord-relevant scoring models. And frankly, anyone motivated to hide something can find a way to present a number that doesn’t reflect their real file.
Our team pulls credit directly through AppFolio. Applicants cannot submit their own report, period. The $75 application fee per person covers the credit pull, and our property manager Jaynah Estes reviews the full file, not just the headline number. That distinction matters a lot.
Accepting a self-submitted credit report instead of pulling your own exposes you to falsified information and kills your legal standing if a denial is ever challenged. Always pull through your own system.
What Score Is Actually “Good Enough”?
Our hard floor is 600. Below that is an automatic denial, no exceptions, no conversations about upfront cash as a substitute.
But here’s where owners get tripped up. They think 600 is the target. It’s the floor. There’s a big difference.
Across our Austin-area portfolio, where the average rent runs around $2,250 a month, we see a lot of applicants in the 650 to 720 range. That’s the realistic middle of the market here. Scores in that range get a deeper look, not a reflexive yes or no.
“Across our Austin-area portfolio, where the average rent runs around $2,250 a month, we see a lot of applicants in the 650 to 720 range.”
The honest take on credit scores? A 750 score doesn’t mean a great tenant. It means a great borrower.
A 760 applicant who job-hops every eight months, earns $4,500 gross on a $2,250 rent, and has zero verifiable rental history is a riskier placement than a 635-score applicant with five years of on-time payments, a stable employer, and income at 4x rent. We’ve placed both types, and the pattern holds more often than owners expect.
What Gets Weighted Equally (or More) Than the Score
Credit score is one signal. It is not the whole picture.
Every application we process at Trend gets evaluated across five areas:
- Income: Gross monthly income must be at least 3x the rent, combined across all tenants. At $2,250/month, that’s $6,750 gross minimum.
- Employment stability: We verify at least three years of employment history. A long tenure at a steady employer outweighs a strong score at an unstable job.
- Rental history: Three years of verifiable residential history is required. Landlords and owners get confirmed through court public records in Travis, Williamson, and Hays County, so fabricated references don’t survive the process.
- Criminal background: Certain serious criminal convictions—such as those involving violence, sex offenses, or domestic violence—may weigh heavily against an applicant and, depending on the circumstances, could justify denial; however, landlords should be aware that blanket automatic disqualifiers based on criminal history categories can raise Fair Housing Act concerns under HUD’s disparate-impact guidance, and applicants’ specific histories should generally be individually assessed.
- Credit report contents: We read the file, not just the number. A single medical collection from 2019 on an otherwise clean report is very different from three eviction judgments and a run of 90-day late payments.
The Medical Collection Problem (and How We Handle It)
A credit score of 640 with one old medical collection in it reads very differently from a 640 with two eviction-related judgments in it. Same score. Completely different risk profiles.
We see tons of applicants with thin credit files or small collections tied to hospital bills. Austin’s healthcare costs are not cheap, and a lot of tenants in our market had a rough stretch around 2020 to 2022 that left a mark on their file. Blanket rejections without reading the actual report aren’t just financially blunt — they can create Fair Housing exposure.
Texas Property Code doesn’t set a statutory credit minimum. That means landlords set their own thresholds. But those thresholds have to be applied consistently to every applicant, and if the pattern of rejections disproportionately falls along a protected class line, you’ve got a problem. Trend’s published tenant selection criteria, with a documented 600 minimum and written evaluation standards, is what protects our owners from that liability.
Having written tenant selection criteria and actually reading the credit report contents — not just the score — is both the financially smarter and legally safer approach for any Austin-area landlord.
What Happens When a Score Is Borderline
If a qualified applicant comes in at 600 to 649, we don’t automatically move to denial. There are a few paths.
First, we look at whether a higher security deposit is appropriate. Texas law does not set a minimum security deposit amount; landlords may set deposit amounts at their discretion, and in some cases may charge higher deposits for applicants approved with conditions — though any such practices should comply with fair housing laws and lease terms.
Second, we look at co-signer or guarantor options. Guarantors must show gross income of at least 5x the monthly rent. On a $2,250 unit, that means $11,250 per month gross. This is how our student housing situations work in UT-adjacent zip codes like 78705 and 78751, where a lot of applicants have no credit history at all. Parents co-sign, and we verify their income the same way we’d verify any applicant.
One thing we won’t do is let an applicant substitute upfront cash for creditworthiness. We had an owner with a Pflugerville townhome who wanted to approve a 571-score applicant because they offered two months’ rent upfront. Our team explained clearly: cash on day one doesn’t predict payment behavior on day 180. And approving a below-floor applicant while denying a future applicant with a similar profile creates the exact Fair Housing inconsistency that gets owners into legal trouble.
Self-Managing Owners Get This Wrong Most
We worked with a South Austin owner who self-managed a single-family home for two years before joining our portfolio. They approved a tenant with a 580 score because the person “seemed responsible” in the walkthrough. That tenant was 47 days late on rent in the first lease cycle and left behind $3,100 in unpaid rent and cleaning fees.
We hear versions of this story regularly from owners asking questions on places like rental property owner forums and local landlord groups around Austin. The details change; the outcome doesn’t. Gut instinct is not a screening policy.
There’s also a criminal history layer that owners miss when they skip formal screening. A long-term client came to Trend after managing three Round Rock units on their own, without running criminal background checks alongside credit checks. They placed a tenant with a prior fraud conviction. The co-tenancy situation fell apart within six months and required attorney-assisted lease termination to resolve. That’s not a cheap outcome.
What Section 8 and Student Housing Change About the Math
Not all Trend properties operate under the same screening rules, and owners need to understand why.
Section 8 and HUD Voucher Holders
For properties in our Section 8 inventory, credit checks still happen. The evaluation weighting shifts because housing voucher holders often have thin or damaged credit files through no fault of their own. Owners who want to participate in HUD programs need to set expectations accordingly and work with a manager who understands how the protocol differs from market-rate screening.
Student Housing Near UT
In zip codes like 78705, 78751, and 78752, many applicants are 19 or 20 years old with zero credit history. The file comes back essentially blank. That’s not the same as a bad file. This is exactly where the guarantor requirement at 5x monthly rent kicks in, and where our application verification process through AppFolio catches what a casual self-managed screening would miss.
How Long the Process Takes and What It Costs
The full application verification at Trend takes two business days once all documents and fees are in. That includes the credit pull, background check, income verification, and rental history confirmation.
The costs are straightforward:
- Application fee: $75 per person over 18, non-refundable
- Admin fee: $125 per property, paid at application, non-refundable
- Security deposit: One month’s rent minimum (higher if approved with conditions)
These are not negotiable fees and they’re not refundable if the application doesn’t pan out. That’s standard for legitimate professional screening. Any management company offering “free” applications is absorbing that cost somewhere else, or skipping part of the process.
If you’re a rental property owner wondering whether your current screening process would catch what we’ve described above, we’re always open to a conversation about what a managed approach looks like for your specific property.
Frequently Asked Questions
What credit score do most Austin landlords require for rental approval?
There’s no statewide standard in Texas, so thresholds vary. In our portfolio, 600 is the hard floor and applications below that score face automatic denial. Many owners in the Austin area set their minimums somewhere between 580 and 650, but applying that threshold inconsistently across applicants creates Fair Housing risk, so written criteria matter.
Can a tenant submit their own credit report to a landlord in Texas?
They can offer to, but any landlord running a legitimate screening process should pull the report independently. Self-submitted reports from consumer services like Credit Karma don’t reflect the same data as a landlord-grade tri-merge pull and can be manipulated. Trend pulls directly through AppFolio so the data comes straight from the source.
What automatically disqualifies a rental applicant?
At Trend, denial factors include a credit score below 600, a prior eviction or broken lease, falsified application information, and serious criminal history such as convictions involving violence, sex offenses, or domestic violence — though criminal history is individually assessed rather than subject to blanket automatic disqualifiers, in keeping with Fair Housing Act guidance.
Does a low credit score mean an applicant will be a bad tenant?
Not automatically. A 635-score applicant with stable employment, five years of on-time rent payments, and income at 4x the monthly rent is a stronger placement risk than a 750-score applicant with job instability and no rental history. The score is a starting point. Income, rental history, and employment stability all carry significant weight in the final call.
What happens if a tenant needs a co-signer because of a low credit score?
Guarantors are welcome but they have to qualify financially. The income requirement for a co-signer is 5x the monthly rent in gross income. On a $2,250/month unit, that means the guarantor needs to show at least $11,250 per month gross. We verify guarantor income the same way we verify every other applicant.
Do evictions show up on a credit check?
Yes, but not always immediately or completely. Eviction-related court judgments do not appear on credit reports from the major bureaus; however, unpaid rent sent to collections can show up on a credit file, and eviction records may appear on tenant screening reports for up to seven years., but the detail depends on when and where the filing happened. Trend cross-checks residential history against Travis, Williamson, and Hays County court public records, which catches eviction filings that applicants intentionally leave off their rental history forms.