MyRental’s tenant screening service (powered by CoreLogic’s SafeRent) provides perhaps the best combination of price, experience, and reporting of any tenant screening service. We found very few issues at all with their service and highly recommend them.
Sample Reports: Basic ($24.99), Premium ($34.99)
What is MyRental?
MyRental is a tenant screening service that provides credit and background checks on rental applicants. While MyRental provides many resources for landlords, this review will focus on their tenant screening services.
MyRental Features and Facts
| Feature | |
| Time to Get Results | Immediately after authorization is given |
| Data Source | TransUnion |
| Who Pays | Options for either landlord or tenant |
| Type of Application | Online through their portal |
| Hard Inquiry | No |
| Nationwide Criminal & Eviction Check | Yes |
| Felonies & Misdemeanors | Yes |
| SSN Fraud Check | Yes |
| Terrorist Check | Yes |
| Sex Offender Check | Yes |
| Income Verification | No |
MyRental Pros & Cons
- Unmatched Pricing – For around $35, landlords get a full scope of tenant screening reports.
- Flexible Packages – With 2 base packages and 5 a la carte add-ons, they keep things simple, yet flexible.
- Thorough Application Process – MyRental gathers information about pets, references, and other information that many tenant screening services overlook.
- Incredible Reports Summary – Even before clicking on an applicant’s report, MyRental has created a beautiful and useful summary of the applicant.
- Slightly Confusing Beginning Process – At the beginning, landlords have the option to select “Rental Application” or “Screening.” These appear to do basically the same thing.
- Long Reports – While you can click to view reports individually, the main report puts all the reports in a single PDF. In this view, there’s a lot of fluff, such as headers, redundant information, and disclaimers.
- No Income Verification – Many tenant screening services offer income verification as an add-on while MyRental does not.
MyRental Tenant Screening Pricing
Here are their main packages along with pricing and features:
| Package | Cost | Features |
| Basic | $24.99 |
|
| Premium | $34.99 | Basic Package Plus:
|
Here are their standalone services that you can purchase, along with pricing:
| A La Carte Products | Cost |
| Credit Report | $14.99 |
| Eviction History | $7.99 |
| Multi-State Criminal | $19.99 |
| Statewide Criminal | $9.99 |
| County Criminal | $14.99 |
MyRental Walkthrough
Here’s how MyRental’s process works for creating the application, the applicant’s process, the landlord’s process, and what the reports look like.
1. Create Application
First, you’ll need to create a Landlord account with MyRental:
You are then guided to a page with this helpful graphic:
Their process then takes you to this page with two choices. The better option is to click the “Rental Application” route because it sends a much more thorough application to your potential tenant. the other route assumes you’ve already gathered lots of information about the applicant. We’ll continue with the “Rental Application” route.
Now, you’ll put in your property’s address and rent information:
Then you’ll add in the applicant’s name and email so that they can be sent an application link. Note that this means you’ll need another way to collect emails rather than having them start and end the process without your involvement.
You have complete control over what documents you would like your applicants to upload. This is an exceptional feature that we haven’t seen in many other services:
Now we’ll add in that you’re wanting tenant screening included in the process. If you choose the other route, it’s assumed that tenant screening will be included.
Per normal with most tenant screening services, you’re given the choice of who will pay. Usually, this will be the applicant as a form of application fee.
In one of the very few confusing moments of the process, you’re then taken to an order summary page where you it looks like you’re about to pay for the tenant screening. This is confusing because you have to add a credit card to continue, even if you’ve chosen for the applicant to pay. They have some explanations on the page, but it’s still a strange step to have here.
2. Tenant Application Process
Applicants will get this email to kick off the application process:
At this point, you’re taken to this well-designed application intro page. This sets the expectation for what’s to follow, and likely helps more applicants finish the process:
You’ll start by adding number of tenants, pets, co-signers, move-in date, and preferred lease term. It’s a breath of fresh air to see a tenant screening service gather this information here rather than require the landlord to follow up afterwards to get it.
Now, we’ll continue with a pretty standard personal information section:
Then, they’ll be asked about address history (which allows you to compare this with the information MyRental pulls later as part of the screening).
Here’s another step that many other tenant screening services neglect. Many landlords will want to know about pets before making a decision, so it’s handy to have it asked on the application itself.
Then, the applicant will fill out 2 years of employment history:
Now, this is one of the best features that MyRental has. They ask for the applicant to address some potentially negative marks about their qualifications. That box at the bottom for additional information should be an essential feature for all tenant screening services.
Perhaps you have an incredible applicant, but they had an eviction 4 years ago. Many landlords would reject them out of hand. However, it’s possible they had extenuating circumstances that are unlikely to repeat themselves, and the applicant can adequately explain that to you. In most cases, the landlord might have missed out on a great tenant, but not in this case.
Then we’re off to payment information:
Next, it’s time to answer a few questions to verify identity:
Then, another page with a quick explanation of what happens next. MyRental does an incredible job of guiding landlords and applicants alike through every process. You never feel confused about where to go or what’s happening next.
3. Landlord Reports View
One strange step is that once an applicant places an order, the landlord actually gets this email, thanking them for their order. This (along with the previous step that gathers the landlord’s credit card) can make it appear that the landlord is the one that has been charged. This isn’t the case, though.
In perhaps the best applicant summary among all tenant screening services, these next two graphics demonstrate what you’ll see before you even click to read the applicant’s reports:
Then this shows up below:
In many cases, landlords can reject applicants without having to sort through long reports.
4. Credit Report
Once inside the credit report, you’ll notice that MyRental doesn’t provide a credit score. Rather they provide a TransUnion Rental Score, which is a metric developed to measure an applicant’s fitness as a renter. It’s supposed to be like a credit score, but tailored towards rentals. It’s difficult for some landlords to move away from credit scores, but it appears to be a more useful metric.
Next, we’ll move onto the summary of tradelines (basically, who the applicant owes money to). The “Total” line at the bottom of the summary is especially helpful because landlords can see what the applicant’s monthly debt payments are:
Here’s an even more succinct summary of the applicant’s tradelines:
Then, we get the standard in-depth information for each tradeline. You can see that this one is for a mortgage, and shows that the applicant has paid everything on time, as well as what their current mortgage payments are.
5. Criminal & Eviction Reports
The Multi-State Criminal Report is simple, as there’s nothing to show if the applicant has no record:
We will see the same with the Eviction History Report
6. Other Reports
MyRental includes a few useful reports other than the standard ones. First, we’ll see a Multi-State Sex Offender Report:
Next up is the Terrorist Check Report. This report gives no information here, but if anything does show up, SafeRent (the owner of MyRental and powered by CoreLogic) will reach out to you.
Lastly, landlords will get a SafeRent Identity report, where they check the SSN and address history:
In totality, their reports are pretty incredible, as you can see in these screenshots. One downside, that’s hard to portray here, is that their main download link gives you a single, giant PDF with all the reports in one. It’s massive, and has a lot of redundant information (such as the applicant’s name, scores, and descriptions of services). However, it’s fairly simple to scroll through to find what you need, and you can also click to open reports individually.
Should You Use MyRental?
Overall, MyRental is one of the best tenant screening services on the market. Their pricing rivals any other screening service and their reports are thorough and easy to read. The entire process is intuitive, meaning that you rarely don’t understand what to do next.
While they are missing an income verification report, we consider that to be one of the least important aspects of other tenant screening services. We recommend MyRental without reservation.
MyRental Frequently Asked Questions
These are the most common questions asked about MyRental:
1. Is MyRental a Legitimate Site?
MyRental is powered by CoreLogic’s SafeRent, which is one of the industry’s mainstay brands.
2. Does MyRental Run a Hard Credit Inquiry?
Credit checks from MyRental are done via soft inquiry and will not affect the applicant’s credit score.
3. Are MyRental’s Tenant Screening Reports Accurate?
MyRental’s reports are accurate and thorough, and they have some of the best-looking reports around.
