Pre-screening is an effective strategy for narrowing your pool of potential tenants. However, it’s a process that can be repetitive, time-consuming, and prone to errors. Applicants must receive, complete, and submit multiple forms, which takes time. The information that they do include on these forms is often self reported, which may be hard to authenticate, increasing the risk that an applicant could be providing false data.
There are also concerns about how a tenant’s personal information is stored and handled. Applicants may not feel safe sharing proof of financial status and other sensitive financial details over unsecured methods, like email.
SingleKey’s Pre-Screen Plus allows you to avoid these pitfalls. It gives you pre-verified details about rental applicants while ensuring tenant data is safe and secure. As a landlord, that means you get through the screening process faster so you can find your perfect tenant sooner.
How Pre-Screen Plus works
Here’s how to use Pre-Screen Plus to verify a potential tenant:
Step 1:
Log in to your SingleKey account and navigate to the Pre-Screen tab. If you don’t have an account with SingleKey, you can create one here.
Step 2:
Create a new pre-screening invitation and choose the Pre-Screen Plus option. This option will allow you to customize a list of questions to ask the applicant and verify their credit score, income, and identity.
Step 3:
Enter details about your rental property and provide the applicant’s email address. You can invite up to five applicants to fill out the pre-screening form, which they will receive through email and complete online.
Step 4:
Receive the tenant’s verifiable credentials. Once the applicant has submitted their pre-screening form and submitted their verifiable credentials through the MyCertn mobile app, you can view the results in your SingleKey account under the Pre-Screen tab. You’ll get verifiable data on the rental applicant’s full name, date of birth, income, and credit score range.
Step 5:
Choose your top candidates faster. Quickly sort through top-quality, vetted applicants, which will appear at the top of your list in your SingleKey Pre-Screen dashboard.
Difference between the basic and Pre-Screen Plus
Here are some of the key differences between our basic pre-screen and Pre-Screen Plus:
Basic Pre-Screen
Pre-Screen Plus
✔ Customizable question
✔ Customizable question
✔ Invite by email
✔ Invite by email
✖ Verified credit score
✔ Verified credit score
✖ Verified income
✔ Verified income
✖ Verified identity
✔ Verified identity
With Pre-Screen Plus, landlords can rest assured that a tenant’s credentials are verifiable. These credentials include:
- Personal ID: Certn uses a proprietary solution with a simple selfie, a snapshot of the tenant’s ID, and biometric facial recognition to confirm their identity.
- Credit: A tenant’s credit score is validated through a trusted third party vendor. This check is considered a soft check and does not impact the individual’s credit score.
- Income: Open banking information is reviewed for important insights into a tenant’s financial status, including their monthly employment and non-employment income trend.
Benefits of Pre-Screen Plus for landlords
Compared to our standard pre-screening offering, with Pre-Screen Plus, you’ll get key details about potential tenants that are already verified by our trusted partners at Certn. There are also many other benefits to using this tool:
Fill vacancies faster
With each applicant pre-verified, you can make faster decisions about who makes the cut for further screening. There’s also no need to follow up with applicants for missing details. By finding your ideal tenant sooner, you save time and reduce your vacancy costs.
Find the best candidates without a hassle
On your pre-screening dashboard, you can quickly sort through applicants, narrowing your list to your preferences. Verified candidates will appear at the top, so you can focus your time and energy on those who meet your requirements.
Access to trusted information
People can easily falsify information on their rental applications, especially since it’s self-disclosed. This makes it difficult for landlords to confirm the accuracy of the details provided by the applicant. The Pre-Screen Plus tool helps you avoid the risk of fraud by arming you with verifiable details about potential tenants.
Save time, energy, and frustration
Conducting pre-screening interviews, manually sorting questionnaires, and hunting down tenants for missing documents isn’t the most efficient use of your time as a landlord. Pre-Screen Plus allows you to skip this administrative burden, automating the process from start to finish. As a result, you can free up your schedule to focus on your core rental business activities.
Scale your rental business
As your rental business grows, pre-screening tenants will demand more and more of your time and attention. It’ll also become a significant expense. Pre-Screen Plus allows you to automate and standardize this repetitive and often tedious step so you can verify large numbers of applicants—without sacrificing quality or security. The result is lower overhead costs and higher profit margins.
Leverage technology to prevent rental fraud
Manually pre-screening each prospective tenant also increases your chances of becoming a victim of tenant fraud. Pre-Screen Plus gives you an edge in finding your ideal renter while steering clear of potential red flags. Because a tenant’s credentials are verified by Certn, you can be confident knowing the information you receive is reliable, accurate, and up to date.
Build trust with applicants by ensuring their privacy
All the information that applicants provide throughout the verification process lives securely in the MyCertn app and is protected by SOC2 and ISO27001 certified security measures. Tenants can review each piece of data before sending it to you, minimizing errors and misunderstandings. Knowing their sensitive data is in safe hands can help your prospective tenants build a strong foundation with you for a future landlord-tenant relationship.
Benefits of Pre-Screen Plus for tenants
In addition to keeping personal data safe, Pre-Screen Plus gives tenants a simple way to share all of their credentials through the MyCertn app with prospective landlords. More benefits include:
- Centralized and accessible: Finding the right documents to complete a rental application is a breeze. MyCertn stores a tenant’s most important personal details in a centralized place for easy access.
- Complete control: A tenant can always manage who sees their data and when, easily revoking access to protect their privacy.
- Better chance of being approved: Applicants who have been verified with Pre-Screen Plus increase their chances of approval by 80%.
- Verify once, share everywhere: Tenants who are pre-verified using MyCertn can skip repetitive form-filling and use their verifiable credentials on multiple applications.
Our final thoughts
We’re excited to partner with Certn to bring verifiable pre-screening to property managers and landlords across Canada through Pre-screen Plus and the MyCertn app. Trusted by 20,000 teams, Certn offers the world’s easiest background checks that enable Canadian property managers and landlords to make informed leasing decisions faster and smoother than ever.
Now, we’re changing the future of digital trust together by reimagining background checks for the 21st century. By combining cutting-edge technology like biometric facial recognition, open banking insights, and comprehensive ID verification, the new Pre-Screen Plus solution helps landlords efficiently filter out unsuitable applicants before investing significant time and resources. This partnership provides a powerful tool to help you streamline tenant selection while giving tenants complete control over their personal data.
To transform your screening process with Pre-Screen Plus, join the waitlist here.
