Where to Find a Rental Application Form | PDF Version
When it comes to your real estate investment property, you want to protect your rental from all angles. This can involve insurance, inspections, security cameras—even a rental application form provides protection.
Why? A key foundation to ensuring your rental is safe is by finding great tenants who will love and take care of the property.
What is tenant application form?
A tenant application form contains a set of information landlords can collect to ensure potential renters will be trustworthy and reliable tenants.
The application itself can contain a range of financial and employment information the landlord can use to determine a tenant’s identity, employment history, and the likelihood of paying rent on time. Additional information that might be asked for is a landlord reference letter and for the tenant to complete a tenant screening report.
What’s important to ask on a rental application form?
RentRedi comes with a preset application landlords can use to ensure you have a comprehensive selection of employment and financial documents to verify the tenant’s information.
- Employment letter
- Most recent paystub
- Prior paystub
- Most recent bank statement
- Prior bank statement
- Most recent W-2
- Most recent tax return
- Prior tax return
- Photo ID
Not all of these sections are required for the tenant to submit the application if you do not require them. You can let your tenant know which documents they do or don’t have to upload.
Additionally, you can manage all your applications from one hub with RentRedi.
Should I prescreen tenants before an application?
Prescreening can be helpful in quickly determining if an applicant meets your minimum requirements for renting from you—before sending a rental application invitation.
Prescreening questions can really be up to you! But RentRedi provides a free prequalification form for tenants so both parties and easily identify if they’re right for the rental.
- Quickly identify whether or not an applicant meets your criteria before you schedule a tour
- Review self-reported responses about financial information, pets, smoking, and criminal history
- 10-question survey already built into the RentRedi tenant app
Can you fake a rental application?
There can be tenants who submit fraudulent tenant applications. This is usually done to then commit a rental scam against the landlord to scheme money from them.
To help reduce the chances of getting a fake application from a tenant, follow these steps:
- Prescreen the tenants (this initial step can help deter people who only want an “easy mark”)
- Use an application that requires multiple forms of identification (employment, financial, landlord)
- Verify employment and any other references
- Run a TransUnion screening. This can provide you with a TransUnion-verified credit report, eviction report, and background report.
How do I write a rental application?
You can write an application yourself…but be very careful. What’s allowed on application forms might vary depending on your state or local laws—and you should always verify this with a lawyer. Importantly, ensure every application contains a standardized set of questions to avoid violating Fair Housing laws.
Typically, you can ask for documentation that helps verify your applicant’s employment, financial status, and identity.
Where can I find a rental application form?
RentRedi provides a rental application both in the RentRedi tenant app and in PDF format so that you & your tenant have easy access to the application. After you process the application, you can automatically run a tenant screening to get a full background and credit report on the tenant.