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Habitia Help

Tenant screening

Screening is how you check an applicant’s credit, criminal, and eviction history before handing them keys. Habitia manages the workflow and the compliance side — you run the actual screening at the vendor of your choice (TransUnion SmartMove is a popular applicant-paid option), and Habitia keeps the record straight.

Note: Habitia never stores the report itself, any credit score, or the applicant’s SSN — only the status and your summary of the outcome. Keep the report at your vendor.

Turning it on

Settings → Organization Info → Tenant screening (admins only), with three positions:

  • Off — no screening workflow anywhere.
  • Optional — screening tools appear on applications; approval is never blocked.
  • Required — every application must have a completed screening or a logged waiver before the Approve button works.

Tip: “Required” isn’t just convenience — applying one policy to every applicant is your fair-housing protection. Screening some people and not others for the same unit is what discrimination complaints are made of.

The workflow on an application

Open any application. Below the applicant details you’ll find the Screening block:

  1. Start screening — marks it in progress. Habitia automatically notifies the applicant (in-app and push) that screening has started and that an email from a screening provider may be coming — so the vendor’s identity-verification email doesn’t get ignored as spam. Send the applicant to your vendor (or run the check yourself) as you do today.
  2. Record result — when the report comes back, record your classification: Clear, Needs review, or Adverse, plus an optional credit band, criminal/eviction flags, and the vendor’s name. This summary is what Habitia keeps.
  3. Decide as usual — Approve or Reject. Under the Required policy, Approve stays blocked until step 2 (or a waiver) happens.

Waivers

Renting to a family member? Applicant already screened by a housing program? Click Waive and type the reason. The waiver unlocks approval and is logged permanently with who and why — a deliberate, documented exception is defensible; a quiet skip isn’t.

The adverse-action letter

If you reject an application after a screening, US federal law (the Fair Credit Reporting Act) requires you to tell the applicant that a consumer report influenced the decision, name the agency, and explain their rights — including a free copy of their report within 60 days and the right to dispute errors.

Habitia generates this letter for you: on a rejected, screened application, click Adverse-action letter to download the PDF, pre-filled with your organization, the applicant, and the vendor you recorded. Send it to the applicant promptly (email or mail).

Note: The letter is only required when a consumer report informed the decision. Rejecting for reasons unrelated to a report (e.g., incomplete application) doesn’t trigger it — and Habitia won’t offer the letter unless a completed screening exists.

What Habitia does NOT do

  • It never auto-rejects anyone. The screening produces information; a person makes the decision — that’s both fair-housing best practice and required in a growing number of jurisdictions.
  • It doesn’t (yet) run the screening itself. Direct integration with TransUnion SmartMove — where the applicant completes and pays for their own screening online — is planned; today’s workflow is vendor-agnostic.

What’s next