DIY Screening or Professional Service?

The Core Tradeoff

DIY screening gives you maximum control and minimum cost per screening. Professional screening services give you speed, automation, and access to databases you can't reach on your own. The right approach depends on how many units you manage, how much time you have, and how comfortable you are interpreting raw screening data yourself.

Neither approach is universally better. A landlord with two rental properties screening one applicant every year or two doesn't need a monthly subscription to a screening platform. A landlord with 30 units processing applications weekly can't afford to manually call references and pull individual reports for every applicant. Match the tool to the job.

What DIY Screening Looks Like

DIY screening means you personally handle each component of the screening process. You collect applications, request and review income documents, call references, and order individual reports from screening providers. You're doing the work rather than delegating it to an automated platform.

The advantage is cost. A basic credit report and background check costs $15-$30 per applicant when ordered individually. You're not paying monthly platform fees, per-applicant premiums, or subscription costs. For landlords who screen infrequently, this is significantly cheaper than maintaining a service subscription.

The disadvantage is time. Each screening takes 2-4 hours of active work — collecting documents, making calls, reviewing reports, documenting results. That's fine for a couple of screenings per year. It becomes unsustainable when you're filling multiple vacancies or managing turnover across a larger portfolio. There's also a learning curve — understanding how to read credit reports, what to look for in background checks, and how to conduct effective reference calls are skills that take time to develop.

What Screening Services Offer

Professional screening services automate much of the process. They provide online application portals, pull credit reports and background checks instantly, search eviction databases, verify identity, and often include some level of income and employment verification. Some platforms even provide scoring recommendations based on the data they collect.

The major services — TransUnion SmartMove, RentPrep, MyRental, TurboTenant, and others — range from $25-$55 per applicant for comprehensive packages. Some charge the applicant directly. Some charge the landlord. Some offer both options. Monthly subscriptions with per-screening fees are common for higher-volume landlords.

The advantage is speed and comprehensiveness. What takes you 3 hours manually takes a screening service 15 minutes. The reports are formatted for landlord review, the databases are broader than what you can access individually, and the compliance frameworks (adverse action notices, Fair Housing documentation) are often built in.

The disadvantage is cost and control. You're paying more per screening, you're relying on the service's databases and algorithms, and you lose the personal touch of calling references yourself — something that often reveals more than any report. Some services also vary significantly in quality and coverage. A cheap background check that only searches one county isn't worth the $15 you saved over a service that searches statewide.

The Hybrid Approach

Many experienced landlords use a hybrid approach: they use a screening service for the data-heavy components (credit, background, eviction search) and handle the relationship-based components themselves (reference calls, income document review, behavioral assessment). This gives you the speed and database access of a professional service plus the depth and nuance of personal verification.

In practice, this means the applicant fills out the application and authorizes a screening check. The service pulls credit, criminal, and eviction data within minutes. While that's processing, you review the income documents the applicant submitted and start calling references. By the time you're done with the calls, the reports are ready. You feed everything into your scoring framework and have a decision within a day.

This hybrid approach costs roughly $25-$40 per applicant (the service fee) plus 1-2 hours of your time (reference calls and income review). For most small-to-medium landlords, this is the sweet spot — fast enough to be practical, thorough enough to be effective, and affordable enough to use consistently.

Choosing a Service

If you decide to use a screening service, evaluate them on database coverage (do they search statewide or just county-level? Do they include federal records?), report clarity (can you easily understand and act on the results?), compliance tools (do they provide adverse action notice templates? Do they help with Fair Housing documentation?), cost structure (per-applicant, monthly subscription, or landlord-pays vs applicant-pays?), and turnaround time (instant results or multi-day processing?).

Don't choose solely based on price. A $15 screening that misses an eviction filing because it only searched one county is worthless. A $40 screening that catches a pattern of evictions across three states just saved you $5,000. The value of screening is in what it prevents, not what it costs.