Screening a tenant in Florida is a regulated act.

Screening is the decision that determines almost everything that follows: whether rent arrives, whether the property is looked after, and whether you spend next spring in county court. It is also the part of being a landlord where the law is least intuitive. The credit check itself is straightforward. The paperwork around a rejection is where landlords get caught.

Two bodies of law apply at once. The federal Fair Credit Reporting Act governs how you obtain and act on a credit or background report. The federal Fair Housing Act and Florida Statutes ss. 760.20–760.37 govern who you may reject and on what basis. Neither one cares whether you own one house or fifty.

You may run the report — because the applicant asked you to

A tenant screening report is a consumer report, and you need a permissible purpose to obtain one. Under 15 U.S.C. s. 1681b(a)(3)(F)(i), a permissible purpose exists where you have a legitimate business need for the information in connection with a business transaction that is initiated by the consumer. An applicant who submits a rental application has initiated that transaction.

That is the legal basis. In practice, take written authorisation anyway. It documents the permissible purpose, and every reputable screening provider requires it before releasing a file.

The step almost everyone misses: the adverse action notice

This is the part that matters, and it is the part that gets skipped.

If you decline an applicant, charge them more, require a larger deposit, or require a co-signer — and that decision is based in whole or in part on information in a consumer report — you have taken an adverse action. Under 15 U.S.C. s. 1681m(a) you must then give the applicant:

• notice of the adverse action, orally, in writing or electronically;
• the credit score you used, where a numerical score was part of the decision, together with the associated disclosures;
• the name, address and telephone number of the screening company that supplied the report, plus a statement that the screening company did not make the decision and cannot tell the applicant why it was made; and
• notice of the applicant's right to a free copy of the report from that company within 60 days, and the right to dispute anything in it.

Note how little of this is discretionary. "We went with someone else" is not an adverse action notice. Nor is silence. The obligation is triggered by the report having influenced the decision at all — not by the report being the only reason.

Fair housing: written criteria, applied identically

Under Fla. Stat. s. 760.23 it is unlawful to refuse to rent, to make a dwelling unavailable, or to discriminate in the terms of a rental because of race, colour, national origin, sex, disability, familial status, or religion. The same section makes it unlawful to publish an advertisement indicating any such preference or limitation — the listing is covered, not only the decision.

Familial status catches people out. Section 760.23(6) extends that protection to any person who is pregnant or in the process of securing legal custody of a child under 18. A preference for "no children" or "adults only", written or spoken, is exactly what the statute prohibits.

Local government adds to this list in some parts of Florida. Ordinances vary by county and by city, so check the ordinance where the property actually sits rather than assuming the state list is the whole list.

The defensible way to screen is unglamorous: write your criteria down before the property is advertised — income multiple, credit threshold, rental history, what in a background check disqualifies — then apply them to every applicant in the order applications arrive, and keep the file. Consistency is what makes a rejection defensible. Judgement calls made applicant by applicant are what make it indefensible.

Deposits: how you hold it, and the 30-day disclosure

Once you accept money, Fla. Stat. s. 83.49(1) gives you three lawful options and no fourth: a separate non-interest-bearing account in a Florida financial institution, a separate interest-bearing account in a Florida financial institution (with the tenant receiving at least 75 percent of the annualised average rate, or 5 percent simple interest, at your election), or a surety bond with the clerk of the circuit court plus 5 percent simple interest to the tenant. In all three the money may not be commingled with your own funds or used until it is actually due to you.

Section 83.49(2) then requires written notice to the tenant — in the lease itself, or within 30 days of receiving advance rent or a security deposit — disclosing the deposit and where it is held, and further notice within 30 days if you later change how or where it is held. There is one exemption worth knowing: by its own terms that subsection does not apply to a landlord renting fewer than five individual dwelling units.

The separate 30-day deadline for claiming against a deposit at the end of a tenancy is a different rule with different consequences, and we cover it in the guide to Florida security deposit law.

The fee in lieu of a deposit, and the trap inside it

Since 1 July 2023, Florida has allowed a landlord to offer a tenant the option of paying a recurring fee instead of a security deposit. The rules are set out in Fla. Stat. s. 83.491, which applies to rental agreements entered into or renewed on or after that date.

Offering it is entirely your choice — s. 83.491(7) says a landlord has exclusive discretion and is not required to offer it at all. But that same subsection contains the rule that matters at screening time:

If you offer the option, you may not use a prospective tenant's choice to pay, or offer to pay, a fee in lieu of a security deposit as criteria in the determination to approve or deny an application for occupancy — and you must offer the same option to all new tenants renting on the same premises.

In other words, an applicant who takes the fee option cannot be treated as a weaker applicant for having taken it. If the fee option is on your application form, it has to sit outside your scoring entirely.

The statute also requires a signed written agreement, a fee that cannot be increased during the term, and a prescribed disclosure in capitals explaining that the fee is not a deposit and does not reduce the tenant's obligations. A fee collected this way is expressly not a security deposit under s. 83.43(13), so the deposit rules above do not convert it into one.

What this looks like when it is run properly

Every applicant for a Hollywood or Broward County property we manage goes through background, credit and rental-history checks against criteria that were written down before the listing went live. Declines go out with the adverse action notice attached, every time. Deposits sit in a separate account with the s. 83.49(2) disclosure served inside the deadline.

None of that is difficult. It is simply a process that has to happen the same way every time, which is exactly the kind of thing that erodes first when an owner is managing a rental around a full-time job. If it has already slipped, the comparison of self-managing against hiring a manager sets out the rest of the trade honestly.

This is general information, not legal advice. Florida landlord–tenant law is detailed and fact-specific, and statutes change. Verify anything you intend to act on against the current Florida Statutes Chapter 83, Part II, and consult a Florida attorney before serving notices or filing an eviction.