House has been vacant 23 days and every applicant fails one criterion. Which one do you bend

Run the numbers on what each failure actually costs you when it goes wrong. Income shortfall at 2.7x means the tenant has roughly 110 a month less cushion than your rule wanted, which is one car repair. A 580 from medical collections tells you about a hospital, not about rent. No verifiable history means you have no data at all, which is the only one of the three where you're guessing rather than measuring.

So I'd rank the risk as C worst, B second, A least bad. That ranking is about the information content, and it isn't a recommendation on your house. The 3,800 to wait for D is real money but it's a known cost, and a bad tenant is an unknown one with a floor somewhere below negative ten thousand.

I've cleaned out after both a high-score tenant and a thin-file tenant and the damage had nothing to do with either number. What predicted it, both times, was how they treated the property during the showing and whether they had ever owned anything they maintained. Not a criterion you can write down, which is exactly why I don't argue for it very hard.

61 a day is the number I'd stare at. Nine weeks for D is 3,800 and it also means your first year's cash flow is mostly gone before a tenant moves in. Does D's current landlord confirm the move-out date in writing?

tally, that's the check I'd make too. A nine week start date that slips to eleven has happened to people I know. If D confirms and you can get a signed lease with rent starting on a fixed date rather than on possession, waiting looks a lot better than it does right now.

Whatever you relax, relax it as a written rule that applies to every future applicant, not as an exception for this person. Federal fair housing law and additional state and local protected classes govern how screening criteria get applied, and inconsistent application is where owners get into trouble, so have a lawyer in your state review the written criteria once before you use them again.

On the substance, an income floor with a larger deposit or a guarantor is the adjustment that has documentation behind it. Deposit limits and what you may charge are set by state law and vary a lot, so confirm what's allowed where the house is before you offer it.

New at this, so mostly reading. Is 23 days even long? I had it in my head that a month was normal.

rigging, it depends entirely on the market and the season, and a house sitting in November behaves differently than the same house in June. wren, the question I'd ask before bending anything is whether four applications in 23 days is a screening problem or a price problem. Four is thin. If it's really thin for that pocket, the rent is 60 or 80 high and no amount of criteria adjustment fixes that.

arbor said the thing I was circling. If you drop the rent 75 and get nine applications, you get to keep your criteria and pick, which is a better outcome than winning an argument about credit scores. Costs you 900 a year and buys you selection.