How to read your tenant screening report, step by step
Updated: Sep 25
Tenant screening reports can look complicated. They can combine credit information, income verification, rental history and court records into one report, often using labels that aren’t immediately clear.
But don’t start by trying to work out whether your report is “good” or “bad.”
Audit your report before worrying about what it means.
First make sure the information actually belongs to you. Then check whether it’s accurate, complete and current. Only after that should you think about how the information might relate to a rental application.
Here’s how to check your tenant screening report, section by section.
What is a tenant screening report?
A tenant screening report is a type of consumer report used in rental decisions.
Depending on the screening company and report, it can contain information such as:
Identity information
Credit history
Rental history
Income or employment verification
Eviction records
Criminal records
Other public-record information
A score or recommendation produced by the screening company
Not every tenant screening report contains all of these things.
The report itself doesn’t approve or deny your application. It provides information that a housing provider can use when applying its rental criteria.
Because tenant screening reports prepared by consumer reporting agencies are covered by the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act, or FCRA, reporting agencies have legal responsibilities around accuracy, access and disputes.
Start here: audit the information before interpreting it
When you first open your report, don’t start with your credit score or scan for anything that looks negative.
Start with four questions:
Is it mine? Does every record actually belong to you?
Is it accurate? Are names, dates, balances, employers, addresses and court outcomes correct?
Is it complete? Does the information tell the full story? A court case that shows a filing but not a later dismissal, for example, can give an incomplete picture.
Is it current and legally reportable? Look for old information, outdated balances and records that should no longer appear.
This order matters.
There’s little value worrying about what a housing provider might think about information until you’ve established that the information is actually correct.
Step 1: Check your identity information
Start with the basics.
Your report may contain identifying information such as:
Your full name
Previous names or variations of your name
Date of birth
Current and previous addresses
Other identifying information used to match records to you
What should you check?
Look for names you don’t recognize, addresses where you’ve never lived, incorrect dates or other information that appears to belong to someone else.
Identity information matters because screening companies use identifying data to connect records to people.
A wrong match can cause someone else’s credit, eviction or criminal information to appear in your report.
If something isn’t yours, don’t try to interpret it. Flag it.
Step 2: Check income and employment information
A tenant screening report may contain income or employment verification.
Exactly what you see depends on how the information was verified. A report might contain an employer, employment status, reported or verified income information, or information obtained from another verification source.
What should you check?
Compare the report with what you actually provided.
Check:
Employer names
Employment status
Income amounts
Pay frequency
Dates
Whether income sources are missing
Whether information has been attributed to you incorrectly
Don’t assume that a mismatch means you’ve failed a screening criterion. First establish why the information doesn’t match.
Colorado also limits how landlords can use income in rental screening. For a renter who isn’t using a housing subsidy, a landlord using financial information as a criterion generally can’t require annual income exceeding 200% of the annual rent. Different rules apply to renters using housing subsidies and certain income-restricted housing.
Step 3: Check the credit section
Credit information can be one component of a tenant screening report, but a tenant screening report and a credit report aren’t the same thing.
Depending on the screening product, the report may contain credit information such as accounts, payment history, balances, collections, bankruptcies or a credit score.
What should you check?
Don’t start by judging the number.
Check the underlying information:
Do all the accounts belong to you?
Are open and closed accounts shown correctly?
Are balances reasonably current?
Is a debt shown as unpaid even though you paid it?
Are there duplicate accounts?
Are late payments attributed correctly?
Are collections actually yours?
Are dates correct?
If the underlying credit information is wrong, the problem may originate with a credit reporting company or the company that furnished the information.
Colorado also limits how far back rental and credit history can be considered. If a landlord uses rental history or credit history as a criterion, Colorado law generally prohibits consideration of history beyond the seven years immediately preceding the application.
Step 4: Check your rental history
Rental history can come from different sources and isn’t presented identically in every screening report.
If your report contains rental-history information, compare it with your own records.
What should you check?
Look at:
Previous addresses
Dates you lived there
Landlord or property information
Rental-payment information, if included
Rent or other amounts shown as unpaid
Collections connected to a previous tenancy
Any other claims about your rental history
Pay particular attention to money shown as still owed.
If you paid an amount that the report shows as outstanding, gather documentation such as payment records or correspondence that can support a dispute.
Step 5: Check eviction records carefully
Don’t treat the word “eviction” as enough information by itself.
An eviction filing, a dismissed case and an order granting a landlord possession are different things.
Colorado also has specific rules about public access to eviction records. Eviction court records are generally suppressed when a case begins, and whether the record later becomes publicly available depends on what happens in the case and whether an exception applies.
What should you check?
For every eviction record, check:
Does the case actually belong to you?
Is the address correct?
Is the court correct?
Is the case number correct?
Is the filing date correct?
Is the final outcome shown?
If the case was dismissed, does the report say it was dismissed?
Has one case been represented as several different eviction records?
Is a suppressed record appearing when it shouldn’t?
Is the information too old to be reported?
The CFPB specifically warns renters to look for eviction cases with missing dispositions, duplicate records, outdated information and records that should no longer appear.
Federal law generally limits how long negative information can appear in consumer reports. Eviction court cases can generally appear on tenant screening reports for up to seven years, although the exact FCRA rules depend on the type of information involved.
Step 6: Check criminal records, if they’re included
Not every tenant screening report contains criminal-history information.
If yours does, accuracy is particularly important.
What should you check?
For each record, ask:
Is this actually me?
Is the name correct?
Is the date of birth or other identifying information correct?
Is the jurisdiction correct?
Is the offense described accurately?
Does the report distinguish between an arrest, charge and conviction?
Is the final disposition correct?
Has one case been duplicated?
Does the report contain sealed, expunged or otherwise unavailable information?
An arrest and a conviction aren’t the same thing. Different stages of a single criminal case also shouldn’t be presented in a way that inaccurately makes them look like separate cases.
Federal reporting limits also differ depending on the type of criminal information. Don’t assume that the seven-year rule applying to some other negative information applies identically to every criminal record.
Step 7: Look for scores, recommendations or screening results
Some screening reports include a score, recommendation or other result generated by the screening company.
If yours does, separate that output from the underlying data.
The useful question is still:
Is the information feeding that result accurate?
A screening company’s score or recommendation isn’t the same thing as the underlying credit, rental, court or identity records.
It also isn’t itself your landlord’s final rental decision.
If something looks unexpected, work backward through the report and check the underlying information before drawing conclusions from the score or recommendation.
What can a landlord see in your tenant screening report?
What a housing provider sees depends on the report it obtains.
Tenant screening reports can contain information from multiple sources, including credit information, rental history, eviction records, employment verification and criminal history.
Some screening products may also provide a score or recommendation based on criteria selected by the housing provider.
There isn’t one universal tenant screening report that every landlord sees.
That’s another reason it’s useful to know which consumer reporting company prepared a report about you and to review the information that company holds.
The most common tenant screening errors to look for
You don’t need to assume your report is wrong. But you should know what kinds of problems to look for.
Federal consumer protection agencies have identified issues including:
Information belonging to another person
Incorrect or incomplete eviction outcomes
Duplicate eviction records
Duplicate criminal records
Sealed or expunged records appearing in reports
Outdated information
Debts shown as unpaid after they were paid
Incorrect balances
Missing updates to court cases
The principle is simple: don’t interpret inaccurate data. Correct it first.
What should you do if your tenant screening report is wrong?
Under the FCRA, you can dispute inaccurate or incomplete information with the consumer reporting agency.
The agency generally has 30 days after receiving your dispute to conduct a reasonable reinvestigation, although the period can be longer in certain circumstances.
A useful dispute should identify the specific information you believe is wrong and include supporting documentation when you have it.
Depending on the error, you may also want to dispute the information with the company that supplied it. For an incorrect court record, for example, you can check the underlying court information to establish what the official record actually says.
If information is found to be inaccurate, incomplete or unable to be verified, federal law provides procedures for correcting or deleting it.
This article isn’t intended to replace our full guide to screening errors and disputes. If you’ve found something wrong, use that guide for the next steps.
How do you get a copy of your tenant screening report?
You have rights to access information consumer reporting agencies maintain about you.
Under the FCRA, a consumer reporting agency must, upon request and proper identification, disclose the information in your file.
There are also specific rights after a rental decision.
If a housing provider takes an adverse action based in whole or in part on a consumer report, federal law requires notice that includes information about the reporting company and your right to request a free copy of the report from that company within 60 days.
Colorado provides an additional protection. If your rental application results in the landlord obtaining a consumer report about you, the landlord must provide you with a copy of that consumer report if your application is denied, along with notice of your right to dispute its accuracy.
So if you’ve been denied, don’t guess about what the screening report contained. Get the report and audit the information.
How portable tenant screening reports work in Colorado
A portable tenant screening report, or PTSR, is a specific type of consumer report defined by Colorado law.
For a report to qualify, it must be prepared at the prospective tenant’s request and include information provided by a consumer reporting agency. Colorado law specifies information the report must contain and requires it to state the date through which that information is current.
A landlord can require a qualifying PTSR to have been completed within the previous
30 days.
The required information includes identifying information, employment and income verification, rental and credit history, and criminal history for relevant jurisdictions, subject to the requirements and exceptions in Colorado law.
There is an important exception for renters using a housing subsidy. Since changes enacted in 2025, their qualifying PTSR isn’t required to include a credit history report, credit score or adverse credit event.
Colorado generally requires landlords to accept a qualifying PTSR, subject to a statutory exception. When the law requires the report to be accepted, the landlord can’t charge the prospective tenant an application fee or a fee to access or use the report.
Acceptance of a PTSR is not the same as approval of the rental application.
How to audit your report in five minutes
If you don’t have time to read every line immediately, use this order:
First, check identity. Make sure the report belongs to you.
Second, check records. Look for accounts, addresses, court cases or criminal records that aren’t yours.
Third, check outcomes. Make sure paid debts show as paid and court cases show the correct final disposition.
Fourth, check dates. Look for outdated information and incorrect timelines.
Fifth, check completeness. Ask whether anything important is missing that changes the meaning of what’s shown.
Only then start thinking about what the information means for your rental application.
In short: read for accuracy before meaning
A tenant screening report can contain a lot of information, but the first job isn’t to decide whether the report looks good or bad.
Audit it.
Make sure the identity information is yours. Check the income and employment data.
Verify credit accounts and balances. Review rental history. Look closely at eviction and criminal records. Confirm dates, outcomes and amounts.
If something is wrong, dispute it before treating it as meaningful.
A screening report is only useful when the information behind it is accurate.
Understanding that information gives you a much clearer picture of what a housing provider may actually be reviewing.
Review your information before you share it
Rentell gives Colorado renters a chance to review their screening information before sharing their portable tenant screening report with a housing provider.
You can see the information connected to you, check potential matches and challenge information that doesn’t look right before you share your report.
