Guide to Tenant Screening and Tenant Background Check

Any Chicago apartment landlord who's been around the block knows that every successful Chicago apartment tenancy begins with tenant screening and a tenant credit check.  Cook County's Just Housing Ordinance, which took effect in late 2019, fundamentally changed how landlords are allowed to evaluate applicants — and most Chicago landlords have had to update their screening process accordingly. 

This guide walks through the Cook County rules every Chicago landlord needs to know, the questions to ask on a rental application, and how to read a tenant credit and background check the right way. At the end, we'll also cover the option Domu now offers landlords directly — a fully integrated TransUnion screening built around Cook County's compliance order.

 

Start Screening

 

 

Is a Tenant Screening Service the Same as a Background Check?

The best way to think of a tenant background check is a snapshot of a renter's history with previous apartment rentals. If a renter is serious about signing a lease for an apartment, a landlord should get serious about checking their references. Landlords should ask for at least two previous landlords (not roommates, not significant others) in the tenant's rental application form and follow up with them. Aside from the obvious questions about eviction and damages in the tenant's history, landlords might want to inquire about neighbors' complaints, the apartment's cleanliness, and any other potential red flags in their apartment rental history.

 

Chicago & Cook County Tenant Screening Rules Every Landlord Should Know

In April 2019, the Cook County Board of Commissioners passed the Just Housing Ordinance (JHO). It took effect on December 31, 2019, and remains the governing tenant-screening compliance standard for every landlord operating in Cook County. The ordinance requires all landlords in Cook County to assess a potential tenant's qualifications before looking at their criminal history. In practical terms, Cook County landlords cannot review or ask about an applicant's criminal history until the landlord has provisionally approved the applicant based on credit, income, and rental history. The JHO prohibits landlords from denying housing based on arrests, juvenile records, and sealed and expunged records. Suppose a criminal background check shows that an applicant has a criminal conviction. In that case, the landlord must disclose the source of information to the applicant so that they can dispute its accuracy. Landlords must also perform an individualized assessment of the tenant's criminal history before denying housing. 

In addition to concerns about criminal history, most landlords review a tenant's credit history. Federal credit-reporting standards require all three major credit bureaus — TransUnion, Experian, and Equifax — to verify that any landlord pulling a tenant's full credit report has the proper safeguards in place. That typically means a rigorous on-site inspection by a licensed third-party inspector before the landlord can pull a credit report directly. Inspectors check to ensure that reports are stored in a locked file cabinet, that there is a shredder on-site, and that the landlord's home office is separate from the living area. Inspections can take several days to schedule and incur an additional cost to the landlord. Additionally, many part-time landlords may not pass such an inspection. For these reasons, the recommended services here on Domu do not require an on-site inspection. Because the applicant initiates the tenant screening process, an on-site inspection is not necessary to use the services below, making them ideal for smaller landlords who screen tenants only a few times each year.

 

What Questions Should Chicago Landlords Ask Prospective Tenants?

All Chicago apartment landlords should not accept any rental application, irrespective of the credit report results, until they've examined a bona fide photo identification tying the prospective tenant to the name on the report. Identity fraud in rental applications happens more often than landlords expect, so it pays to be careful at the pre-screening stage. Compare the birthdate on the credit report to the birthdate on the driver's license — this is the simplest way to catch applicants (often family members with the same name) who may try to substitute someone else's credit for their own.

 

Understanding Tenant Credit & Background Screening

Landlords can think of a tenant credit check as a report card on a tenant's finances. A credit check will return a numerical score that indicates the overall financial stability of a potential tenant or their total credit. This will help landlords answer a number of questions. 

What Information Does a Tenant Credit Check Provide?

A tenant background check provides a wide array of helpful information to landlords. For example, does the applicant have outstanding debt or other financial obligations? Do they have large balances on credit cards? Do they have any liens are taken out against them or their property? These answers could significantly affect a tenant's ability to pay the rent in full and on time. 

Can I Choose a Tenant Based on Their Credit?

Landlords should determine an acceptable range of credit to move forward with a tenant's application. Many of the recommended services here provide more guidance on what a healthy credit score looks like. Landlords should apply the same credit standards to every applicant. In Chicago, Cook County, and Illinois statewide, landlords cannot discriminate based on a tenant's source of income — including Housing Choice Vouchers (Section 8), SSI, SSDI, child support, alimony, or veterans' benefits. For a fuller breakdown of Fair Housing protections, see our guide to Chicago's Fair Housing laws.

What Are the Drawbacks of Tenant Screening Services?

Tenant screening services like the ones we review here are beneficial for several reasons, and the chief among those is that they're really quick. Landlords in a hurry might appreciate a fast, cost-effective tenant screening process, but some drawbacks come with the speediness of some screening services. Namely, the reliability of aggregated data. What does that mean? Think of a Google search for a common name like John Smith. The results will number in the millions, if not billions, and how might someone reliably narrow down the results to the *one* John Smith that they wanted to check? These screening companies are pulling data from several public databases. There is an increased likelihood that landlords will see results for a completely different person in their tenant screening report with a common surname.

Another problem with tenant screening reports comes in the form of customer service. Tenant screenings are generally viewed as speedy and quick transactions that follow the typical script of 1) landlord provides email address to screening company, 2) applicant receives email from the company and pays the screening fee, 3) credit report comes back to the landlord, and then the ball is in the landlord's court. The decision to move forward with an applicant is squarely on them, and they (hopefully) hold enough information to make an informed, unbiased decision. Suppose the decision is ultimately, "No, I'm not going to move forward with this tenant's application," and the reason is because of something that showed up in the credit report. In that case, the landlord must inform the tenant that the credit check was the issue. The Federal Fair Credit Reporting Act requires landlords to provide an adverse action letter to tenants to inform them that something in the credit report was concerning and the name and contact information for that credit agency, too, so that the tenant can request a copy.

These drawbacks — unreliable aggregated data, slow customer service, and the burden of generating compliant adverse action letters — are exactly the friction points Domu's screening service was built to eliminate.

 

Skip the Patchwork: Screen Tenants Directly on Domu

For most Chicago landlords, tenant screening has meant stitching that patchwork together themselves — pulling credit through one service, paying separately for an eviction search, then trying to make sense of a criminal background report that wasn't designed with Cook County's Just Housing Ordinance in mind.

Domu's tenant screening was built to replace that. The service runs directly inside the Domu landlord dashboard and pulls a full TransUnion credit report, court-record eviction history, and criminal background check — all in one place, with no subscription, no per-report fee, and no requirement to list your unit on Domu.com. The applicant pays a flat $50; landlords pay nothing.

Just as important, the workflow follows the order Cook County law requires. Credit, income, and eviction history are evaluated first. The criminal background check is gated behind your provisional approval — exactly how the Just Housing Ordinance has structured tenant screening since 2019. For Chicago landlords managing one unit or twenty, that compliance is built in from the first screen, not bolted on after the fact.

For more on what to look for in a tenant report, our guide to how landlords should use credit scores walks through FICO ranges and when a clean rental history matters more than the three-digit number itself.

Ready to try Domu's tenant screening? See how it works, what it covers, and how to send your first applicant a screening invite — all on our tenant screening overview page.