Ask ten property managers what minimum income should approve a tenant, and most say three times the rent. Exactly three, not 2.9 or 3.1. Credit score cutoffs and years of rental history get the same treatment. I’ve been on this soapbox for years: almost nobody has tested any of it.
I sat down with Rob Whiting, Co-Founder and CEO of Boom, whose screening product we use at RL Property Management.
Credit scores: useful, not sufficient
Rob gave the most balanced take on credit scores I’ve heard. They predict willingness to pay and give you something objective to point to in a dispute. They also work for hard cuts at the extremes and cost less than income verification. But he warned that a high score can sit on top of a thin file, for example one trade line from being a joint holder on a parent’s card. His summary: “useful, not sufficient.”
I go further. Credit scores predict well, and I worry we’ll lose the ability to use them. Rob has talked with regulators about positive-only credit reporting mandates, and he made my argument: a score works only if it predicts. Report only the good news and scores inflate, so lenders stop trusting them. Imagine a bank that reported on-time mortgage payments and dropped the late ones. No lender would take that seriously.
I’d also argue credit scores are one of the more progressive inventions in modern finance. Race, religion, and ethnicity appear nowhere in the score. Rob compared it to the SAT: he grew up in a lower-middle-class family without connections, and a standardized score helped neutralize relationships he didn’t have.
Screening has moved past the push-button era
Rob described three phases. First came “push button” screening: collect an application in a form, then run a credit, criminal, and eviction bundle. In the second, the “link out” phase, vendors bolted on identity and income checks and sent applicants off to separate flows. The third, which Boom is built around, is a decisioning platform that looks across all the data at once.
The data is intertwined. Identity drives the credit report and decides how you search criminal and housing court records. Review each piece in isolation and you miss the contradictions between them.
We’re screening without data
This is my soapbox, so I pushed Rob on it. No one is taking a million applicants, letting them all move in, and measuring which attributes predict on-time payment versus eviction. Rob agreed it’s less sophisticated than people assume, even at big operators. He cited TransUnion reports putting the cost of a bad placement somewhere in the $8,000 to $15,000 range, depending on state and timing.
His answer to “what should the criteria be” was that it depends on how many vacancies you carry, your local and macro climate, and how your portfolio has performed. Boom wants to bring more dynamism to that, with criteria that adjust over time instead of a fixed rulebook: three times income, a 650 score, no felonies.
I disagree with the industry default. Property managers shouldn’t set criteria at all. We have the incentive to fill a vacancy fast and keep the owner happy, and the temptation grows whenever a human can override the rules. Over a five or ten year horizon, letting a unit sit another week or two for a well-qualified applicant almost always wins.
Fraud is bigger than fake pay stubs
Fake pay stubs get the headlines, and Rob confirmed they’re the most commonly faked document. He said fraud shows up across the whole application: identity documents, income, credit reports, housing history addresses (which can point searches at the wrong places), and even pets.
I ran a quick test while we talked. Claude and Grok both refused to make me a fake pay stub, and Rob got the same result. I suspect a good story would talk some tools into it. Rob noted that dedicated sites for this exist, and when one shuts down, another pops up elsewhere.
I’ll admit my first instinct was “don’t ask, don’t tell”: if a fraudulent tenant pays the rent, does it matter? Rob pointed out that some leases, like the NAA lease, treat false answers on an application as a default on par with non-payment. Florida’s new law, effective October 1, makes application fraud a felony. Good luck getting a judge to enforce a lease clause against a tenant who’s current on rent. A felony statute changes the math, and other states may follow Florida.
On income, Boom handles about eleven income types, Rob said, including 1099 and gig work through payroll integrations. Applicants can also link a bank or upload statements.
Speed, and the Zillow problem
Rob put Boom’s portfolio-wide average at 0.9 days from application to decision, and about half a day for teams with a dedicated leasing person. Partners usually arrive running two to four days, and some run five to ten. He also walked me through Boom’s new leasing CRM, which includes listing syndication, showings with lockbox integrations, and an omnichannel inbox.
Then we got to my favorite topic. Zillow lets single-family listings syndicate for free but charges at 25 doors and up, and it already has its own rental application. My worry: Zillow beefs that application up and requires every listing partner to accept it. Great for renters, terrible for operators who can’t opt out of the platform. Rob thinks it’s possible, but that third-party managers with real workflow needs would find it too thin. My half-serious fix involves every PMS, showing tool, and NARPM collaborating like the Manhattan Project. Rob called it a game theory problem, which is a polite way of saying he doesn’t see it happening.
We also covered why Boom isn’t on AppFolio’s marketplace. Rob says Boom asked and AppFolio said no, and his read is that it comes down to protecting payments, screening, and insurance revenue.
If you screen tenants or plan to shop for a screening vendor, the full episode is worth your time: