How do I choose among qualified prospects without being accused of breaking a law?
In the first place, keep in mind what your standards are. Your standards are the minimum requirement for entry into your property. Meeting them does not guarantee a prospect that you will rent to him. Assuming you are in the happy position of having several qualified applicants from which to choose, there are three ways to make the final decision that make sense: 1. use some arbitrary or random method, or 2. have the applicants bid against one another, or 3. select the most qualified applicant. Many advocate the first method as a means of avoiding invidious discrimination claims. Indeed, some in the civil rights industry claim it is legally mandated, although no one has ever been able to point to anything specific on the subject. Basically, one avoids being accused of making an illegal decision by abdicating the decision making process to some event outside of the landlords control. Examples might be first to apply or a coin flip. While this is certainly a method of resolving the probl
