Denied an Apartment Over a Tenant Screening Report? Your FCRA Rights

By The Kim Law Firm, LLC

If your rental application was denied, the decision was probably driven by a tenant screening report you never saw. Landlords order these reports from screening companies, and the reports are often wrong: an eviction that belongs to someone else, a criminal record that was expunged, a debt that was already paid. A case that was dismissed but still reads as an eviction is its own problem, and it is disputed the same way. The Fair Credit Reporting Act gives you the right to see that report, dispute what is wrong in it, and recover damages when the screening company will not correct it.

Your tenant screening report is a consumer report under the FCRA

A tenant screening report is a consumer report under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, and the company that assembled it — whether a nationwide bureau or a screening platform the landlord subscribes to — is a consumer reporting agency with the same duties as Equifax, Experian or TransUnion. The report typically combines a credit file, eviction filings pulled from court records, criminal records matched by name and date of birth, and sometimes rental payment history, then returns a score or a recommendation. The Act requires the agency to follow reasonable procedures to assure the maximum possible accuracy of what it reports, and the errors that get people denied are usually failures of exactly that: an eviction case that was dismissed but is reported as if it were filed and never resolved, the same case listed twice, a claimed amount labeled as a court judgment, a sealed or expunged record, a criminal entry that belongs to someone with your name, or a credit file mixed with another person’s. In October 2023 the FTC and the CFPB ordered TransUnion’s rental screening unit to pay $15 million over reports with precisely those defects, including dismissed eviction cases reported without their outcome and amounts labeled as judgments when no court had awarded them.

What your landlord had to tell you

A landlord needs a permissible purpose to pull your report, and evaluating your rental application is one; the Act does not require a separate written authorization for tenant screening the way it does for employment, although most applications include one. What the Act does require is notice. If the landlord takes an “adverse action” based in whole or in part on the report — a denial, a larger deposit, a co-signer requirement, or a higher rent than another applicant would pay — it must tell you so, give you the name, address and telephone number of the screening company, tell you that the screening company did not make the decision and cannot explain it, and tell you that you have the right to a free copy of the report from that company within 60 days and the right to dispute anything in it. That notice is the document that starts everything else, because it names the company you have to deal with. If you were denied and got no notice, ask the landlord in writing which company prepared the report; the FTC’s guidance to landlords says the notice is owed even where the report was only one factor.

How to dispute the report so that it counts

Request your file from the screening company named in the notice; after an adverse action the copy is free if you ask within 60 days. Read the whole report, not just the entry you were told about. Then dispute in writing, to the screening company, naming each entry that is wrong and attaching the document that proves it: the court docket showing the eviction case was dismissed or decided in your favor, the expungement order, the payment record, or the identification that shows the record belongs to someone else. Keep the delivery receipt. The company has 30 days to reinvestigate and must delete or correct anything it cannot verify. Ask, in the same letter, that the corrected report be sent to the landlord who received the wrong one; the Act entitles you to that on request for any recipient of the report in the previous six months, and it is the request that can still save the apartment. If the wrong entry is a credit tradeline, dispute it with the credit bureau as well, because the screening platform pulled it from there. A dispute letter template is on this site.

When the dispute fails: what you can recover, and the clock

If the screening company “verifies” an entry that your documents contradict, or deletes it and reports it again, the dispute becomes the evidence of a claim. For a negligent violation the Act gives you your actual damages — the apartment you lost, the higher rent or deposit you paid, moving and storage costs, the time, and the distress of being turned away over a record that was not yours — plus your attorney’s fees. For a willful violation it adds statutory damages of $100 to $1,000 per violation and allows punitive damages. The claim runs against the screening company that got the report wrong; a landlord’s failure to send the adverse-action notice is generally enforced by the FTC and the CFPB rather than by a private lawsuit, so keep the missing notice in the file as evidence rather than counting on it as a claim. An FCRA claim must be filed within two years of the day you discovered the violation, and never more than five years after it happened. Keep the denial, the notice or the absence of one, the report, the dispute and its delivery receipt, the result, and every letter from the landlord. I review that file at no cost and bring these cases on contingency: you pay nothing unless we win. The background check errors page covers the same rights when the report was ordered by an employer.

Admitted in Pennsylvania and New Jersey; available to appear pro hac vice in other federal courts.

Sources: 15 U.S.C. §§ 1681a(d) and (k), 1681b, 1681e(b), 1681g, 1681i, 1681j(b), 1681m(a), 1681n, 1681o and 1681p (United States Code); Federal Trade Commission, Using Consumer Reports: What Landlords Need to Know (2016); Federal Trade Commission, FTC and CFPB Settlement to Require Trans Union to Pay $15 Million over Charges It Failed to Ensure Accuracy of Tenant Screening Reports (12 October 2023), and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s enforcement page for TransUnion Rental Screening Solutions, Inc.

The screening services landlords actually use

A landlord rejecting an application almost never assembled the underlying report. Property managers subscribe to tenant screening platforms that pull credit data, eviction filings from court records, and criminal history, then return a score or a recommendation. Those platforms are consumer reporting agencies under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, which means the eviction record you have never heard of and the criminal entry belonging to someone with your name are both the platform’s responsibility to correct.

• RealPage — a screening platform embedded in large property management systems.
• SafeRent — produces the scores many landlords use to accept or reject applicants.
• CoreLogic — supplies rental screening reports drawing on court and public records.
• TransUnion SmartMove — a screening product marketed to independent landlords.
• TransUnion — the nationwide bureau whose credit data feeds many rental decisions.
• Experian — another bureau supplying the credit component of tenant reports.

When an application is denied, ask the landlord for the adverse action notice naming the screening company, then request your file from that company directly. Eviction records are a frequent source of error because court dockets often record a filing without recording that the case was dismissed or decided in the tenant’s favor, and dismissed cases routinely appear as if they were judgments. Dispute the entry with the screening service, attach the court disposition if you have it, and ask that the corrected report be furnished to the landlord who ordered it.