Rental Criteria: Publish What Applicants Are Held To

Set the income, credit, rental-history, eviction, occupancy and guarantor criteria for your homes once, publish them on each listing before anybody applies, and let renters check their own numbers — with the law of each home's place folded in.

Rental criteria are the rules every applicant for a home is held to: how much they need to earn, the credit score you look for, how much rental history, whether eviction or criminal history is considered, how many people may live there, whether a guarantor is accepted and what documents to bring. When you publish them, they appear on the listing for every renter to read before they apply — the same criteria for everybody, which is what fair housing asks of you. Rental criteria are under Operations → Renting on the website for landlords and under Portfolio for management companies, and in the Tools hub on the iPhone and Android apps.

You choose the numbers; Seayora writes the sentences

You never type a requirement in free text. You choose a number, and Seayora turns it into the sentence the renter reads — with that home's own rent worked in (an income of three times the rent on a $2,000 apartment reads "$6,000 a month") and the law of the home's city and state folded in. The same text is stored with every saved version and is what an applicant is later screened against, so what a renter reads and what they are held to cannot drift apart.

Leave a criterion blank and it is simply not a requirement. A number outside its range is refused with the reason — Seayora never quietly changes what you typed.

The law of each home's place

Seayora checks each home's city and state when it writes the criteria. Where the law bars refusing applicants for past landlord-tenant court cases — New York, for example — the eviction line is replaced by a sentence saying so, with the statute. Where the law caps how far back eviction records may go, the cap applies and the listing says so. In fair-chance places, criminal history is considered only after a conditional offer, and the listing states that procedure; where it may not be considered at all, the listing says that instead. Where state law changes how income or credit is assessed for an applicant with a housing subsidy, that rule is printed beside the income and credit lines.

Two lines Seayora will not publish

Every published set carries this sentence, whatever else you choose: "Housing vouchers and other lawful income count. If a program pays part of the rent, the income requirement applies only to the part you pay." A note that turns away vouchers or other housing programs is refused before it is saved, because refusing lawful income is illegal in many states and cities.

Seayora does not publish an occupancy limit below two people per bedroom. HUD treats two per bedroom as a reasonable general standard (63 Fed. Reg. 70256), and a stricter limit can exclude families with children.

A note that describes who the home would suit, or who lives nearby, is refused too — a criterion describes the requirement, never the person.

Your default, and a home's own criteria

Set a default once and every home without criteria of its own uses it. To give one home different criteria — a different income multiple on a luxury unit, say — open that home and save its own. It starts from the default it was showing. Use my default instead removes a home's own criteria and puts the default back.

Nothing appears on a listing until you publish it. Turn Publish on the listing off to keep a draft. A listing that has not been published at all shows no criteria.

What renters see, and the qualification check

On the listing, renters see each requirement as a sentence, the voucher line, any rule of the law that applies, the documents to bring and your note. Under it, Check if you qualify asks only the questions your criteria need — household income, any program payment, credit score, years of rental history, household size and a guarantor's income — and says, line by line, whether their numbers meet each one.

This check runs on what you type and nothing else. It does not pull a credit report, it is not an application, and Seayora does not keep your answers. It never asks about court or criminal records. A result is not a decision either way: "From what you entered, you do not meet at least one criterion. You can still ask the owner — some accept a guarantor or other evidence."

Screening, and the record

Every save keeps a version with the exact text it published. When you request a background check, the application records which published version was in force, so you can show that every applicant for a home was held to the same rules. Where the law requires your written criteria to be given to an applicant before they pay — Washington, the District of Columbia and Cook County, for example — your published criteria are used for that disclosure unless you write it yourself.

These are the criteria every applicant for this home is held to. Meeting them is not an approval, and nothing on this page is a decision — the decision follows screening, after you apply.

From your assistant

A connected assistant can read the criteria a listing publishes and run the same qualification check with the tool listing_requirements — including for a renter connected without a Seayora account. It quotes the sentences rather than paraphrasing them, and says plainly that a listing with no published criteria is not a listing with no requirements. Setting or publishing criteria is done in Seayora.

Related features and guides

• Your Renter Profile: Fill It In Once, Share It When You Apply — Documentation. Write your work, income, rental history and pets once, attach the documents owners usually ask for, and share it with the homes you apply to — only if you turn sharing on. Owners see notes about how each file was made; so do you.
• Saved Searches & Rental Alerts — Feature. Save a search once and get notified when new rentals match your criteria — so you see the right unit before it is gone.
• Concessions and Move-In Specials — Documentation. Give free rent, a rent discount, a one-time credit or a waived monthly charge on a lease, and advertise a move-in special on a listing — billed by the rent engine, stated in the lease, and shown to renters with the gross rent beside the net.
• Applying Together: Co-Applicants and Guarantors — Documentation. Roommates, partners and guarantors apply for one home together: the lead invites them by email, each accepts from their own account and is screened as themselves, and the approved household signs the lease.
• Online Rental Applications — Feature. Collect complete rental applications online and track every applicant in one pipeline, with the same questions and the same criteria for everybody. Screening reports are not available through Seayora yet — no consumer reporting agency is connected — so nothing is ordered and no screening fee is charged.
• Reusable Renter Profile — Feature. Build a reusable renter profile once and apply to multiple Seayora properties without starting over — and, once screening is available, without paying a new application fee each time.

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