Renting out a property sounds simple until you’re staring at a stack of applications and trying to figure out who’s actually going to pay you every month. Most owners default to one number: the credit score. They pick a cutoff, stick to it, and call it screening.
That works until it doesn’t.
We work with over 340 rental units across Athens and the surrounding counties, and the owners who run into trouble are almost never the ones who screened too hard. They’re the ones who screened too shallow — either trusting a number without reading what’s behind it, or skipping the report entirely and going with their gut.
This is for rental property owners who want to understand what a credit report actually tells you, what score to ask for (and why the answer isn’t what most people think), and how to read the story underneath the number instead of just reacting to it.
In This Guide
What Shows Up on a Tenant Credit Report
A credit report isn’t just a score. It’s a financial timeline. When we screen applicants through AppFolio, which pulls a full TransUnion report, here’s what we’re actually looking at:
- Credit score – A snapshot number, typically ranging from 300 to 850
- Tradelines – Every open and closed credit account: cards, loans, car payments, student debt
- Payment history – On-time payments, 30-day lates, 60-day lates, and worse
- Collections accounts – Debts sent to collections, including who the original creditor was
- Public records and civil judgments – Court-ordered debt, bankruptcies
- Eviction history – Prior eviction filings and judgments, which only show up in court record searches integrated with the credit pull
- Credit inquiries – How often someone has applied for new credit recently
That last one matters more than people realize. A renter shopping for multiple apartments in the same month will have a cluster of inquiries. That’s normal. An applicant with ten new credit applications spread over six months while their income hasn’t changed? That’s a different pattern entirely.
The eviction history point is worth pausing on. Georgia landlords who run manual or piecemeal screening miss prior eviction judgments because those don’t always appear on a standard credit pull alone. AppFolio catches them in the integrated search, which is one reason we built our screening process around it.
If a tenant has a prior eviction judgment and you miss it because your screening method didn’t include a court record search, you have no legal recourse after the fact. You handed over the keys based on incomplete information. Eviction judgments can be 7 years old and still predict future behavior.
The Score Question Everyone Asks First
Everyone wants a number. We get it. So here it is.
In Athens, we recommend owners set a minimum cutoff around 620. Applicants below that threshold carry meaningfully higher eviction risk in this market. The sweet spot where most well-qualified renters land is 680 to 720. Scores in that range consistently correlate with on-time payment histories across our portfolio.
“In Athens, we recommend owners set a minimum cutoff around 620.”
But here’s what we tell every owner who asks us this question: the score is a headline, not the article.
A tenant with a 720 score who has a pattern of 30-day-late payments spread across three credit cards over the past two years is riskier than a tenant with a 650 score whose only negative marks are medical collections from a single hospital event. The first person has a habit. The second had a bad year.
We’ve walked owners through this distinction dozens of times. Manning, one of our property managers, had a situation recently where an applicant came in with a 640 score. Looked borderline on paper. But when Manning pulled up the full report and walked the owner through it, the derogatory marks were all tied to one medical billing cycle, no missed housing payments, no pattern of debt avoidance. The owner approved the applicant with a slightly larger security deposit. That tenant has since renewed without incident.
The number told one story. The report told a better one.
Why Fixating on a High Score Can Work Against You
Let’s be real about the Athens market specifically.
This area has over 40,000 students enrolled at UGA. A huge chunk of applicants in zip codes like 30601 through 30607 are between 18 and 22 years old. Many of them have thin credit files — not bad credit, just almost no credit history yet. A 720+ cutoff in a college town doesn’t protect you from bad tenants. It just eliminates a massive chunk of your applicant pool and extends your vacancy.
At $1,600 a month, every day your unit sits empty costs you about $53. A three-week vacancy while you wait for a perfect-score applicant who may never materialize runs around $1,100. That’s real money.
The smarter approach is layering. A 640 score combined with verified income at 3x rent (so $4,800/month gross for a $1,600 unit), no prior evictions, and a co-signer with a 700+ score beats a solo applicant with a 730 score and no rental history almost every time in our experience.
Oconee and Barrow County markets — think Watkinsville, Winder — do tend to skew toward older applicants with more established credit histories, so owners there can sometimes hold a stricter minimum without losing applicant volume. But for in-town Athens properties near campus, rigidity on score alone is a self-inflicted problem.
The Debt-to-Income Problem Most Landlords Ignore
Here’s one we see trip up owners constantly. They look at the credit score, they verify income, and they stop there. What they miss is the debt load the applicant is already carrying.
At $1,600/month rent, we apply a 3x income rule — at least $4,800 a month in gross income. But that only tells you the tenant earns enough. It doesn’t tell you how much of that income is already committed elsewhere.
We’ve talked to owners who approved a 700-score applicant without running the debt-to-income math and ended up with a tenant who was spending over 55% of a $5,000/month income on fixed obligations before rent even hit. Car payment, student loans, two credit cards. By the time rent is due, there’s very little margin. Eviction risk on a 700-score tenant in that situation is often higher than on a 650-score tenant with no existing debt.
A good target is that no more than 35 to 40% of a tenant’s gross income goes toward all debt obligations combined, including your rent.
Student Housing and Co-Signers
The UGA applicant pool requires a slightly different framework. A 20-year-old with six months of credit history and a secured card isn’t a red flag — it’s just normal for their age group.
For applicants under 21 with less than 12 months of credit history, we routinely recommend owners require a co-signer with a 700+ credit score. This is standard practice for properties near campus in neighborhoods like Five Points and Boulevard. The co-signer takes on legal liability for the lease, which gives you a financially established adult on the hook if the student tenant runs into trouble.
One of our clients described the leasing experience after we helped her place a qualified tenant with proper screening and a co-signer in place: “I’ve been a landlord for over fifty years and this was the quickest and easiest move-in I have ever experienced.” Ashlyn, who manages that portfolio, had a signed lease in place six months before the prior tenant’s lease expired — and got a $150/month rent increase in the process. That kind of outcome starts with knowing who you’re putting in the property.
Reading the Timeline, Not Just the Snapshot
Most negative marks on a credit report stay visible for up to 7 years, though bankruptcies can remain for up to 10 years. But they’re not all equal.
A collections account from 6 years ago on an otherwise clean report tells a very different story than one from 8 months ago. The credit report shows you exactly when each delinquency occurred, which gives you the ability to read trajectory. Is the applicant cleaning up their finances? Or is the pattern continuing?
We look at a 30-day-old missed payment differently than a 4-year-old one. The older the delinquency with nothing new behind it, the less predictive it usually is of future behavior. A tenant who had a rough stretch in 2020 and has paid everything on time since is often a solid bet — more so than someone whose report is technically clean but who has a thin file and zero rental history.
Read the credit report like a timeline, not a scorecard. The date and type of each negative mark tells you far more than the score alone.
What Happens When You Skip Proper Screening
We had an owner come to us after self-managing a $1,400/month unit in Athens. They’d approved a tenant with a 590 credit score because “they seemed really nice in person.” Within four months, the tenant was 60 days behind on rent. By the time the eviction was complete, the owner had spent roughly $2,000 in legal fees and lost 45 days of rent — close to $2,100 in unpaid income, plus the legal costs. Over $4,000 in total damage from skipping a screening step that costs a fraction of that.
Our leasing fee is 50% of the first month’s rent. On a $1,600/month property, that’s $800. If a poorly screened tenant turns over in six months, that $800 doesn’t just disappear — you pay it again on the next placement. Good screening protects the fee you already paid.
A similar story came from an Oconee County owner who had been relying on pay stubs alone. No formal credit check. The applicant had an active collections account from a prior landlord — the kind of thing that only shows up on a credit report. AppFolio flagged it before keys were handed over. That flag saved the owner a lease that almost certainly would have ended badly.
Pet Applications and Credit Scores
This one comes up more than you’d think. An applicant has a borderline credit score — say, 635 — and they also have a dog.
Our recommendation to most owners is to allow pets, and most of ours do. Approved pets come with a $250 non-refundable pet fee per animal. But when credit is already borderline, the owner’s decision about the pet often comes down to how the rest of the application looks. A 635 score with clean rental history, strong income, and a co-signer is a very different application than a 635 score with a recent eviction filing and a Labrador.
The pet fee doesn’t offset risk — the screening does. And a tenant who clears a real screening process is far more likely to take care of a property regardless of whether they have animals.
FAQ
What credit score do most landlords in Athens require?
Most landlords in this market set a minimum somewhere between 600 and 650, though some hold higher. We typically recommend 620 as a hard floor, with the strongest applicant pool falling in the 680 to 720 range.
Does a bad credit score automatically disqualify an applicant?
Not necessarily. The type of debt matters as much as the score. Medical collections with no missed housing payments tell a different story than a pattern of 30-day-lates across multiple accounts. A lower score with strong income and a co-signer can still be a solid application.
Can a landlord require a co-signer if an applicant has thin credit?
Yes. In Athens, requiring a co-signer for applicants under 21 with limited credit history is standard practice, especially for student housing near campus. The co-signer takes on full legal liability for the lease.
How long do negative marks stay on a credit report?
Most derogatory items, including collections and charge-offs, remain on a credit report for 7 years under federal law; however, civil judgments are generally no longer reported by the major credit bureaus, even though the FCRA would otherwise permit a 7-year reporting window. A single missed payment is visible for up to 7 years as well, though the impact on the score fades over time as the mark gets older.
Does Georgia law limit how much a landlord can charge for a security deposit?
Yes. Georgia caps security deposits at two months‘ rent for leases signed or renewed on or after July 1, 2024 (O.C.G.A. § 44-7-30.1). However, landlord must return the deposit within 30 days of move-out under O.C.G.A. § 44-7-34, and wrongful withholding creates real legal exposure regardless of how large the deposit was.
What’s the difference between “no credit” and “bad credit” for a tenant applicant?
No credit means the applicant simply hasn’t used credit long enough to generate a meaningful file. Bad credit means they have a history of not meeting obligations. These require completely different responses — no credit often just needs a co-signer, while bad credit needs a much deeper look at what happened and when.
If sorting through credit reports, income verifications, and co-signer agreements feels like more than you signed up for when you bought a rental property, we’re open to a conversation. We’ve been managing properties across Clarke, Oconee, Barrow, and the surrounding counties for eight years, and this is exactly the kind of thing we handle every day.