Building a Tenant Screening Tool for Landlords

GreenAcres started as a land listing platform, but landlords kept asking for the same thing: tenant screening. So I'm building it.

The problem landlords face

If you own rental property, screening tenants is a nightmare. You're juggling multiple services — TransUnion for credit checks, county courthouses for eviction records, previous landlords for rental history — and trying to piece together a complete picture of whether this person will pay rent on time and not trash your property.

Most landlords either skip screening (risky) or pay $30-50 per applicant to a service that gives them a PDF they can barely read. There's a better way.

What we're building

The tenant screening module lives inside the GreenAcres dashboard. Landlords create a screening request, the applicant fills out a consent form, and within minutes they get:

• Credit report summary — score, payment history, outstanding debts
• Background check — criminal records, sex offender registry
• Eviction history — nationwide eviction records
• Rental history verification — automated outreach to previous landlords
• Income verification — bank statement analysis or pay stub verification

All of this renders in a clean dashboard view, not a 40-page PDF. Green flags, yellow flags, red flags — at a glance.

The tech stack

This is a Next.js app with Supabase on the backend. The screening data comes from third-party APIs:

• Credit and background data from a consumer reporting agency (had to go through FCRA compliance to get access)
• Eviction data aggregated from county court records
• Rental history via automated email/text outreach to listed references

The FCRA compliance was the hardest part. You can't just pull someone's credit report — there's a whole framework of permissible purposes, adverse action notices, and dispute resolution processes. I spent two weeks just on the legal and compliance side.

The DeedStack connection

GreenAcres is actually part of a bigger play. DeedStack is the umbrella platform for real estate tools — land listings (GreenAcres), property deed search, and now tenant screening. Each tool feeds users into the others. Someone buying land on GreenAcres might eventually build rental units and need tenant screening.

Pricing

$15 per screening report. The margins are thin because the underlying data costs $8-12 per pull, but the volume play makes it work. At 100 screenings per month, it's a solid recurring revenue stream.

Timeline

MVP is about two weeks out. The credit report integration is done, background checks are in testing, and the rental history verification needs one more iteration. The hardest remaining piece is the adverse action notice workflow — legally required when you deny a tenant based on screening results.

I'll post updates as this comes together. Tenant screening isn't sexy, but it's the kind of boring, essential tool that landlords will pay for every single month.