Set up your prescreening requirements | RentEngine Help Center

Overview

RentEngine prescreening stops unqualified leads and scammers before they schedule a showing. You control prescreening through prescreening templates, which define requirements, questions, and rejection logic.

Fraud Guard adds additional identity and fraud protection for self-guided showings.

What prescreening does

Prescreening lets you:

Set minimum credit and income requirements
Ask custom questions
Automatically allow or reject prospects based on responses
Collect information without rejecting when needed

Prescreening happens before a prospect schedules a showing.

Create a prescreening template

Go to Settings > Showings > Prescreening
Select an existing template, or click New template
Click the pencil icon to name the template
Click Set as default if you want this template applied to new vacancies automatically

You can create multiple templates and assign them to individual units.

Custom message

Add a short message (up to 160 characters) that prospects see while completing the prescreening. This is optional and useful for setting expectations or providing context before they answer questions.

Set credit and income requirements

Use the sliders to define:

Minimum credit score
Minimum income (as a rent multiplier or fixed dollar amount)

If you'd like prospects to enter exact numbers instead of selecting from ranges, check Ask for the credit and income as free text instead of pre-defined ranges.

If you don't want the prescreening to ask for credit and income at all, check Bypass pre-screening income & credit questions.

Note: Even if you bypass income and credit questions, we still recommend setting your minimums so RentEngine AI knows how to respond when prospects ask about rental requirements.

Configure prescreening questions

You can ask questions that require a Yes/No, free text, or date response.

Yes/No questions allow you to set rejection logic:

Yes — Rejects prospects who answer Yes
No — Rejects prospects who answer No
Do not reject (informational) — Collects the response without affecting eligibility

Use informational questions when you want visibility without blocking showings.

Housing voucher question

The first question is always about housing vouchers. If a prospect has a housing voucher, you can choose to bypass the income and/or credit requirements for them based on the setting you select here.

The AI Voucher Communications dropdown controls what RentEngine AI tells prospects about voucher acceptance — independently of your rejection logic:

Default — The AI follows the question's rejection logic
Communicate that vouchers ARE accepted — The AI tells prospects vouchers are accepted, regardless of rejection logic
Communicate that vouchers ARE NOT accepted — The AI tells prospects vouchers are not accepted, regardless of rejection logic

This is useful for legal compliance in states where you cannot reject solely based on having a voucher, while still controlling what the AI communicates to prospects.

Note: We don't recommend removing this question, as it creates confusion about whether the property accepts housing vouchers.

Preferred move-in date question

This fixed question asks prospects for their preferred move-in date. You can set rejection logic based on:

Custom override — Reject if the requested date is more than X days from the unit's earliest move-in date (you set the number)
Portfolio — Reject if the date exceeds the "Property can be held for … days" value in your Portfolio Defaults
Do not reject (informational) — Collect the date without rejecting based on it

Add or remove questions

Click New to add a question
Click the trash icon to remove a question
Drag the handle on the left to reorder questions

We don't recommend adding more than four questions.

Zillow Instant Tour

If you bypass income and credit questions, have no mandatory questions, and have ID verification disabled, RentEngine will notify you that Zillow Instant Tour is automatically enabled — meaning prospects can schedule directly through Zillow without completing prescreening.

Configure Fraud Guard

Each prescreening template includes its own Fraud Guard settings.

ID verification

Check Require a valid photo ID to verify that IDs are real, valid documents. Additional options appear when enabled:

Require a matching selfie and liveness check — Prospects must take a live selfie. RentEngine compares it to the ID and confirms the person is physically present. This blocks static images and screenshots.
Skip ID check if pre-screening criteria are not met — Skips ID verification for prospects who don't meet other requirements
Allow IDs without an expiry date — Accepts IDs that don't include an expiration date
Allow expired IDs for up to X days — Enter a number of days (0–365) to accept IDs that expired recently
Minimum age — Set a minimum age requirement (18–100)

Phone verification

Check Require a valid, non-VOIP phone number to block prospects using anonymous VOIP numbers.

Showing location verification

Check Require showing location verification to confirm the prospect is physically at the property before releasing the lockbox code. Set a GPS radius (0.2–3.0 miles).

We recommend keeping the radius above 0.5 miles, as GPS on phones can be imprecise.

Behavioral checks

Enable behavioral checks to flag suspicious patterns automatically. When a prospect trips one of these checks, their future showings require PM approval before they're confirmed.

Mismatched price interest — Flags prospects who show interest in properties with prices that differ by more than a set percentage. Useful for catching prospects who may be using a property to gain access without genuine interest.
Repeat showing to the same property — Flags prospects who schedule more than one showing at the same property.
Repeated prescreening rejections — Flags prospects who have been rejected more than a set number of times across any properties.
Showing started far from the property — Flags prospects who begin a self-guided showing from a location more than a set number of miles from the property.

Each check can be enabled or disabled independently, and you can adjust the thresholds to match your tolerance level.

Self-guided showing fraud warning

Custom message shown to prospects before they start a self-guided showing. Your RentEngine's phone number is included in that message {{ re_leasing_phone_number }}.