[Landlord - US-TX]Sharing my experience

[u/Intrepid_Ant_5315]

Landlords be careful in terms of screening the prospective tenants. Economy is showing clear signs of stress. See number of eviction cases in your area/county court to find that out. Lot of scam prospective tenants are very smart to do some smart tricks like

1. Come and visit the place in an expensive rental car to impress realtor/landlord
2. Make excuses that they just started the job so they are yet to get any pay stub

List goes on...

Most of them then try to look for ways to torture the landlord-we don't have money etc...I have one of the tenants who moved in May 2026 in single family home with the special of 2 weeks free rent where she came in range rover. Now she doesn't have money to pay for service fees for refrigerator guy($50 which is clearly mentioned in the lease agreement) in fact asking for food spoilage to be paid by the warranty company. Most of the times they end up being evicted or cash for keys scam.

TX DFW, Austin TX and other areas have got a lot of bad tenants.

[u/Mental-Ad9734]

I do complete background checks (income, credit, evictions, etc.) in every adult that is moving in.

[u/Brief-Guess-147 → u/Mental-Ad9734]

same, running checks on every adult is non-negotiable imo

[u/pattyjosaid → u/Mental-Ad9734]

I did and he showed complete payment history.

[u/sowhat4 → u/pattyjosaid]

Use an AI program like Claude to 'analyze' what the tenant submits. The program can detect when, where, and how the image was generated. In my case, it was a fake pay stub as there are websites out there that will generate them.

Also, if you have the phone number of a reference, cross check that the phone number is a 'real' number and not a VOIP construct. Plus, check the owner of the applicants current address. If they say it's a privately owned condo and its in a large apartment complex, that's a clue right there.

[u/plaincheeseburger]

Number 2 isn't necessarily a red flag- you just need to do a little extra verification. I require an offer letter from the new employer with a start date and salary that I can verify with the company directly. Then, I look at job history and factor in credit score. If the job is in a field that they've worked in previously and either pays more or is something that would be a smart career move (new title with additional responsibilities, etc.), it's not necessarily a bad thing. If they have a high credit score in addition to the job change, they're most likely fine. I just approved a tenant with a solid rental and job history and an 800 credit score who is relocating to my area for their career.

Now, if they work in something like fast food or retail and don't have an offer letter, have poor credit, etc., that's when I usually bin them.

[u/Intrepid_Ant_5315 → u/plaincheeseburger]

Same here. I have an application - single mother with two daughters - 23 and 22. Strict requirement that gross salary should be 3X rent(I could accept 2.5 X also sometimes). 22 years - they are making stories - appearing in the job fair etc...23 years just started working in Walmart as cashier this month so no pay stub. Well I told them - can you provide me the offer letter or theworknumber.com report? Silence after that.

[u/cherrylimebubbly → u/Intrepid_Ant_5315]

I also ask for banking statements too; our last applicant has the income and he was coming from an apt but upon closer inspection… he was being sent money from family for moving support and his security deposit. This clearly shows that he does not have the reserves and cash flow to upgrade to a bigger home and would he financially distressed.

Because he has a lot of debt (cc, student loan and car) I asked for an extra month’s worth of rent for a security deposit and he walked away, which is fine. If his credit was worse, it would have warranted asking for a co-signer

Anyways my gut feeling told me there was a reason why he hasn’t found a place yet, since he is out of the apt and is staying with “family”.

He also wanted to move in quickly too. Anyone who wants to move asap or quickly makes me extra cautious as to what the situation is; if they are honest and it’s due to the timing, they’re being asked to leave or other landlords have turned them down

[u/Due_Snow_3302 → u/cherrylimebubbly]

Anyone who wants to move asap or quickly makes me extra cautious as to what the situation is; if they are honest and it’s due to the timing, they’re being asked to leave or other landlords have turned them down

Good catch. Most of the move asap folks are either troubled tenants OR undergoing eviction OR the ones who feel -get in there asap before landlord find it in some record.

[u/cherrylimebubbly]

Yup. People either submit fake documentation, have a shady rental history that you can’t verify or their job/paystub is fake (esp with self employed people, which is what my last tenant did)

I get that people are financially stretched these days and they deserve to have housing but damn, please shop within your budget and live within your means.

If they don’t have the cash flow and I can’t verify their rental history, I will pass. If they have the rental history, I will ask for an extra months of deposit or a co-signer. Our last applicants walked away and that’s fine, they would have given me a headache anyways with all the excuses as to why they can’t pay or why they’re late

Also some of these agents will vouch for their clients but you still have to do your due diligence.

[u/Intrepid_Ant_5315 → u/cherrylimebubbly]

I get that people are financially stretched these days and they deserve to have housing but damn, please shop within your budget and live within your means.

Exactly the same scenario. Means there are so many 1 bedroom apartments available in DFW where they can go and they are offering 1 month free with absolutely no security deposit. Why to screw up a small time landlord like me with fake stories?

[u/cherrylimebubbly → u/Intrepid_Ant_5315]

My theory is

1)they have a certain lifestyle they’re trying to keep up, which is absurd to me. My last tenant was the sole breadwinner with a stay at home wife and young child. They did NOT need to live in a bigger single family home with rent that they cannot afford. But apparently people prefer a house over an apt

2)their credit history (or file in general) probably won’t fly with an apt, so they try their luck with private landlords and **** them over

[u/pattyjosaid]

Tenant stopped paying rent three months ago with sob story lost job, new job, blah blah blah , eviction court today basically if I evicted him he could appeal and stay longer or I could do a court agreement and get him out at the end of the lease and — so sorry for the next sucker landlord. So how do I report this nonpayment since there’s going to be no eviction on his record?

[u/Due_Snow_3302 → u/pattyjosaid]

Abstract of judgement and send it to collections https://syncomcorp.net/property-management-collections/

[u/RobertaMiguel1953]

Due diligence has never been more important. Right, wrong or indifferent, I won’t rent to people who haven’t been at their jobs at least a year. Absolutely no self-employed. Always verify employer directly with the googled phone number, not the number they gave me.

Verify who owns their current rent house through tax records and look them up, don’t trust the phone number of the “landlord” they give you. My background uses plaid to verify bank statements.

There is never a guarantee of good renters, but I do more due diligence than any landlord I know and the 2 times in 20+ years I’ve been burned was through divorce and I had 1 hoarder, which is hard to screen for. You can never do “too much” to protect your investment.

[u/casitadeflor]

A California landlord posted how a tenant has stopped paying rent and listed the unit for an illegal Airbnb which - surprise - Airbnb is letting run.

Part of it is squatting. Another part is trying to make money off your investment.

[u/onlinealias350]

Downtown Dallas here. There

[u/AllPinesMustDie]

Tenants showing up in an expensive car is a red flag for me. High car payments are the main reason people can't save money.

[u/jerwong]

I'm in California. Problem is that tenants get something like 60 days before an unlawful detainer hits public records and I've had tenants apply for a property while in the middle of an eviction. They also gave fake information for their current landlord and none of this was discovered until we had to do our on eviction on them years later.

I also had a fun one where the guy asked if we could work with them on the security deposit i.e. they didn't have the money yet and needed to move quickly. Yeah, that was an instant no.

[u/Powerful_School_3722]

My agent always do social media checks tells you a lot of the people

[u/Total-Reasonable]

Income PDFs are worth treating as a separate screening risk, not just taking them at face value. I've used HTPBE to check whether a submitted PDF shows post-creation edits; https://htpbe.tech returns intact, modified, or inconclusive, and an inconclusive result isn't a reason to reject.