No Tenant placed by Birmingham Home Leasing has ever been evicted since the company was founded in April of 2014.
Please check with all of our competitors to get the most up to date information, but it is our understanding that we provide the most thorough tenant screening in the metro area.
- Birmingham Home Leasing has been inspected and approved under FCRA section 604(a)(3) to pull “permissible purpose” type credit reports from TenantReports.com®. We pull the applicant’s three FICO® 8 Credit Bureau reports and average the scores. The Broker recommends minimum required credit scores according to the chart below.
- The applicant’s rent payment cannot exceed 28% of their gross monthly income. The applicant’s debt load, including the rent, cannot exceed 40% of their gross monthly income.
- We pull background reports and screen for evictions, property damage filings, felonies for violent crimes, drug trafficking, sex offenders, terrorism, etc.
- We have a 100% success rate in detecting synthetic identity fraud. Synthetic identity fraud is one of the fastest growing financial crimes in our country. Today, criminals can easily fabricate:
- Fake Social Security Numbers
- Fake Drivers License
- Fake pay stubs
- Fake IRS documents
- Fake credit file with the three credit bureaus
- We constantly receive lease applications presented by criminals who have manufactured a synthetic identity. They are attempting to lease the property for the purpose of rental arbitrage. Rental arbitrage is the practice of a Tenant fraudulently sub-leasing the property to other individuals. Sometimes they will lease the property on short term vacation rental sites. Other times they may rent the property to someone who is not able to be approved for an application. It usually takes several months to discover if synthetic identity fraud has taken place. Since the person you have rented the property to does not exist, it is impossible to recover damages and it may take several months to evict the current occupant. The best way to address this crime is to prevent it. At Birmingham Home Leasing, we know how to detect this type of fraud and prevent it.
- We verify the applicant’s identity and employment by requiring them to transfer their bank transcripts via a third party vendor, Payscore®. This is similar to the process that a mortgage underwriter uses.
- We collect the last two years of the applicant’s IRS returns.
| FICO® 8 THREE BUREAU SCORE AVERAGE | RENT RANGE |
| 670 | $1500 – $1999 |
| 680 | $2000 – $2499 |
| 690 | $2500 – $2999 |
| 700 | $3000+ |