How we choose tenants (and what we don't promise)

Anyone who has let a home knows the scene. Ten enquiries in two days, three people come to view, one is pleasant and in a hurry, and you sign. Sometimes it works out perfectly. When it doesn't, the problem was nearly always visible beforehand: a length of stay that didn't match the contract, a rent too heavy for that situation, a home that needed a kind of care that person couldn't give it.

That is why we wrote down a screening protocol — internally we call it the "Verified Tenant System". The name is grander than the substance, which is simple: read every application against the same criteria, in the same order, and keep a record of how the decision was made.

What it isn't

We start here, because it is the most honest part.

• It is not a guarantee against arrears or future problems. No method is.
• It doesn't promise the perfect tenant. It promises to avoid careless choices.
• It is not an indiscriminate document grab.
• It does not rest on arbitrary or discriminatory criteria. The question is always "is this application consistent and sustainable for this home and this contract?", never "do we like this person?".

The six steps

1. Pre-screening the enquiry

Before any documents: who is looking, for how long, how urgently and why. Many mismatches surface here. Someone looking "for a year, maybe two, maybe more" is not the natural candidate for an Italian transitorio lease, which by law has an end date and requires a documented temporary need.

2. Fit between person and formula

A fixed-term lease is not a 4+4, and a 4+4 is not a flexible let. The applicant is read in relation to the contract structure too. A researcher on a nine-month post and a family looking for stability for their children can both be excellent tenants — for two different homes and two different contracts.

3. Document check

We collect the documents actually needed to assess identity, stability and the soundness of the application. Which ones depends on the formula and the profile: someone arriving on a work assignment documents the assignment, a student documents their enrolment, someone on a permanent contract documents that. We don't ask for "everything, just in case".

4. Affordability

It isn't only about how much someone earns. It's whether that rent is sustainable given their overall situation, the length of stay and the kind of tenancy. A high income that has only just started, with a probation period running, tells a different story from a middling income that has been steady for years.

5. Matching with the home

Some homes call for a certain profile: a top floor with no lift, a period flat with delicate furnishings, a quiet street with neighbours sensitive to noise. Putting the right person in the wrong home is a reliable way to create a problem for both.

6. A recorded decision

Every application is assessed against the same criteria, and the decision is written down with its reasons. Not for the sake of paperwork: the owner should be able to see how a choice was reached, and a reasoned decision can be reviewed, whereas one taken on instinct can't.

Why it protects the tenant too

People tend to think screening only serves the landlord. It doesn't.

A tenant placed in the wrong home, or in a contract that doesn't match their life, is a tenant who will run into trouble: a rent that becomes heavy halfway through the year, an end date that arrives before they are ready to leave, house rules they cannot keep. A good match spares them a hard situation first, and the owner second.

There is a practical benefit as well: clear criteria mean faster, more legible answers. People coming from another city, or from abroad, know what to prepare and why. We often work with applicants who aren't yet in Trieste, in English as well as Italian, and for them clarity is the difference between an orderly move and a chaotic one.

Privacy: little data, kept briefly

Screening involves personal data, and the EU's General Data Protection Regulation asks that only what is necessary for the purpose is collected. For us that becomes working rules:

• the bare minimum: every document requested must help answer one of the questions above; if it doesn't, we don't ask for it;
• a clear purpose: application data are used to assess that application, not to build profiles for other ends;
• nothing that shouldn't count: personal characteristics unrelated to affordability and the fit of the tenancy play no part in the assessment.

This is not legal advice: landlords who handle applications themselves should ask their own adviser how to store and delete this data.

Where technology helps, and where it doesn't

We use digital tools for part of the work: keeping enquiries in order, tracking document expiry dates, checking that a file is complete before moving to the next step. These are deterministic checks — "this is missing", "this has expired".

The decision about a person, though, we don't hand to an algorithm. A model can help summarise a long application or flag a clash between dates; it does not decide who moves into a home. That is a choice of method, and it is also where a mistake would cost most to someone with no way to answer back.

In short

Better filters up front, fewer problems later. The heavy lifting isn't in the signing; it's in what comes before: understanding who is looking, for which contract, how sustainably, for which home. The rest is writing it down so anyone can read it back.