Best Way to Reject a Prospective Tenant
I have an applicant I'm going to reject soon. There are multiple reasons why. I just want to know your opinion on which is the safest way to reject her, as she seems to the type that would try to make my life difficult even with legitimate reasons to reject her.
Here are my reasons:
1. She is going through eviction proceedings right now according to public records. The records state she had a hearing for it yesterday and a bench trial set. No outcome has been recorded yet. It does state that is for non-payment. This is the most clear cut easiest way to reject her if I'm allowed to reject her for an eviction proceeding, as opposed to an eviction that has already happened. I only own one rental unit (this one) and don't accept people who have been evicted, but I would not accept someone in a current eviction proceeding either. I just haven't had it come up yet. This is in Arizona and if I wait for it to be complete, there's a chance if she somehow wins the case (or if it gets dropped for any reason) that the record will be removed from public records. (The law will remove it.) Can I legally reject someone because they are going through eviction proceedings currently?
2. She doesn't have enough monthly income. She has one source of income and it doesn't even come close to covering the monthly rent, let alone the utilities or anything else (which are provided by the tenant). The reason I'm treading lightly here is that I don't want trouble and confusion and she has done a number things that indicate she may be trouble. In the city this is located in, there is a Source of Income Ordinance, saying you can't discriminate against the source of income. This is mainly for Section 8. The FAQ's on this ordinance's website uses saying they don't have three times rent as an indication they may be discriminating. While we are exemption from this ordinance because we only have one rental unit, we don't want trouble. (We don't want government officials coming after us and it being on our burden to prove why we're exempt.) We explain three times rent to prospective tenants with the explaination also that we are exempt from this ordinance. I don't think she will care that we're exempt.
3. She has committed fraud on her application, told us multiple lies, and has several things that don't add up between what she's told us and what's on her application. These are all harder to prove, but of course, this adds even more dealbreakers to wanting to rent to her. For example, she put down a name and number from her contacts that was not her landlord's. She put down a driver's license from another state while saying she had lived at the same local rental for the past 14 years. (Driver's licenses in the state she put down expire in 5 years and she came in driving a car, so she either has been driving with an expired license for at least 8 years, it's a fake driver's license, or she hasn't really lived there for 14 years). She continuosly lied about things before we asked her (why she was moving, when scheduling a tour she told us she couldn't make a particular time due to a doctor's appointment [it was during her evictions hearing].
Which of these things do you think would be the easiest way to reject and cause the least amount of headaches for us, given the circumstances? We have not run TransUnion SmartMove yet for her, as she would have to pay to run it and we look at everything we can first to see if we know they will be rejected before having them pay for the screening. She has a signed paper copy of an application with basics on it and permission granted to us for doing screenings, which includes looking at landlord/tenant court records.
Thanks!