How to screen a tenant in Florida without breaking fair housing law

Screen every applicant against the same written criteria, in the same order, and keep the record. Florida's Fair Housing Act in Chapter 760 and the federal act bar decisions based on race, color, national origin, sex, handicap, familial status or religion. The federal Fair Credit Reporting Act requires an adverse action notice whenever a consumer report plays any part in a denial, a co-signer demand or a higher deposit. And since October 1, 2026, F.S. 817.537 makes getting a lease with fake documents a felony, which gives document verification real teeth.

What are the protected classes in Florida?

The Florida Commission on Human Relations states it plainly: Floridians are entitled to rent "without consideration of their race, color, national origin, sex, handicap, familial status, or religion." Under Chapter 760 and the federal Fair Housing Act it is unlawful on any of those grounds to refuse to rent, to falsely say a home is unavailable, to impose different terms, to threaten or intimidate someone exercising a fair housing right, or to refuse reasonable changes to a dwelling for a disability. A community that does not qualify as 55-plus housing cannot turn away a family with children under 18.

The practical test is whether a rule proxies for one of those classes. "No children," "professionals only," "must speak English" and "no section 8" style language in a listing or a conversation will be read as a proxy. A complaint can be filed with the commission within one year of the act, most are dual-filed with HUD, and remedies include damages, court costs and attorney fees.

How do I write criteria I can apply to everyone?

Write them down before the listing goes live, give them to every applicant, and score every file against them in the same order. Here is the sequence Sea Dog uses, published on the rental criteria page.

1. Income. The common standard is gross income of three times the rent. It is the inverse of the 30 percent housing-cost benchmark, which traces to the 1969 Brooke Amendment and was raised from 25 to 30 percent in 1981; three times rent puts rent at about 33 percent of gross income.
2. Credit. Pick a minimum and treat it as a threshold, not a ranking. The number is your business decision; applying it unevenly is the legal problem.
3. Rental history. Verified references from prior landlords, eviction filings, and balances owed to a previous landlord.
4. Criminal history. The FTC's landlord guidance warns that "a blanket policy of refusing to rent to anyone with a criminal record may violate the Fair Housing Act." Use conviction-based, time-limited criteria tied to safety and property, and review each case individually.
5. Occupancy and animals. Set an occupancy limit and a pet policy, and route any assistance animal request through F.S. 760.27 instead, as explained in Service animals, ESAs and pets in Florida rentals: what you can ask.
6. Application fee. Florida has no statutory cap and no refund requirement, so disclose whether the fee is refundable before you collect it. This fee is not the optional fee in lieu of a security deposit under F.S. 83.491.

How do I verify identity and documents?

HB 1293 created F.S. 817.537, effective October 1, 2026. It says a person may not take possession of a dwelling unit by knowingly and willfully making a materially false written statement about identity in a rental application, presenting "forged, fictitious, or counterfeit documents" to the landlord "including, but not limited to, a driver license, an identification card, a bank statement, or a paystub," or impersonating the person named on the application. The offense is a third-degree felony, and the same bill amended F.S. 83.56(2)(a) so that fraudulent entry is a lease violation the tenant is not given a chance to cure, "regardless of whether criminal proceedings have commenced."

The law punishes the fraud after the fact; your job is to catch it before the keys change hands. Match the government ID to the applicant on a video call or in person. Verify income through the employer or a bank-linked verification service rather than an uploaded PDF. Call the prior landlord at a number you find independently, not the one on the application. Third-party applications that arrive with their own screening package deserve the same checks, which is the point of Should I accept Zillow applications in Florida?.

Key point: Fair housing law does not stop you from saying no. It requires that the reasons be written down in advance, applied to everyone, and provable afterward. The file is the defense.

What does the FCRA require when I deny someone?

The FTC's guidance for landlords treats credit reports, tenant screening reports, criminal background reports, risk scores and even reference-checking services as consumer reports under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. You may pull one only for a permissible purpose, and you must certify to the reporting company that you will use it for housing decisions.

An adverse action is broader than a denial. The FTC lists denying the application, requiring a co-signer, requiring a deposit or a larger deposit than another applicant would pay, and charging higher rent. If any of those rests "partly or completely" on a consumer report, you must give the applicant a notice that includes the name, address and phone number of the reporting agency, a statement that the agency did not make the decision and cannot explain it, and the applicant's right to dispute the report and to get a free copy within 60 days. The notice is required even if the report "played only a small part" in the decision. Oral notice is allowed, but the FTC calls written notice the best practice, and the CFPB's consumer guidance tells applicants to expect one. If a credit score drove the decision, you must also disclose the score, its range, its date and the key factors that lowered it. When you are done with a report, dispose of it securely.

What this means in Central Florida and on the Space Coast

The three-times-rent rule turns into a specific number for each market. Apartments.com put the average Orlando three-bedroom house at $2,419 in October 2026, so a qualifying household needs about $7,257 a month, or roughly $87,000 a year, in gross income. Zillow's rent index for Brevard County, reported by Momentum Research, was $1,887, which works out to about $5,660 a month, or just under $68,000 a year. Put those numbers in your listing's criteria so applicants can self-screen before paying a fee.

Where a complaint goes also depends on the address. The Florida Commission on Human Relations investigates fair housing complaints statewide, but the City of Orlando has its own Office of Human Relations with jurisdiction inside city limits. An owner with homes in College Park and in Oviedo answers to two different agencies for the same screening policy, which is one more reason the policy should be written and identical everywhere. The wider set of recent statutory changes is in Florida landlord-tenant law changes for 2025 and 2026, explained.

Next step

If you would rather not build the criteria, the notice templates and the verification routine yourself, Sea Dog runs that process on every application under the published criteria linked above, with management plans from 8 percent of monthly rent on the pricing page. The start management page explains how a vacant or occupied home comes on board.