RentPrep: Features, Pricing, Integrations & AI Visibility

RentPrep is a tenant screening service, now part of Stessa, and its record leads with a step the other per-report vendors in the tenant screening category do not describe, a review by an FCRA-certified screener before the report reaches you. The report covers SSN verification, criminal, eviction, judgments, bankruptcies and credit, with income and employment verification sold as add-ons. The research notes add a nationwide criminal and sex-offender search, ResidentScore in the credit section, and a history of more than two million screenings since 2007. The facts panel below is rendered from the vendor database with a source and verification date on each entry.

Who it fits

The record tags single-family rental and small multifamily, and RentPrep’s own site adds an enterprise tier for portfolios of 50 or more properties. The buyer at the small end is the same one SmartMove and RentSpree sell to, an owner or a leasing coordinator ordering one report per applicant. What RentPrep offers that buyer is a person reading the report before it lands, which matters most when the applicant’s identity or records are ambiguous and the owner has no screening experience of their own.

Delivery runs through Stessa. If you already keep your portfolio in Stessa, that is the natural place for screening to sit. If you do not, ask what delivering through Stessa means for you in practice, whether you need a Stessa account, what it costs, and whether the report can be ordered and read without adopting the rest of the platform. A manager running leasing inside AppFolio, Buildium, Yardi or RealPage already has a screening module in the system and should ask what that module lacks before adding a second report.

Pricing

Per screening. A Credit Report is $29, a Full Background Check is $29, and a Complete Screening is $49. Income verification adds $10 and employment verification adds $15. The enterprise tier for 50 or more properties is custom. What separates the two $29 products, and what the $49 product adds beyond both, is not in the record, so ask for the contents of each tier by report line. Who pays is also not in the record; SmartMove and RentSpree both make it a setting, so ask whether RentPrep does the same and confirm with counsel what your state allows on application fees.

The add-ons deserve a closer look than their price suggests. RentPrep’s own article on fake pay stubs says they are one of the most commonly faked documents from rental applicants, that fakes are shockingly easy to buy online, and that a landlord should request at least two forms of income and employment verification. The manual checks the article describes, a letter O where a zero should be, suspiciously round numbers, file metadata, are the checks a $10 add-on should be doing for you. Ask whether income verification examines the document, reads income from a payroll or bank source, or has a screener check it by hand, and ask the same of employment verification.

Integrations

The record lists no PMS integration. Delivery is through Stessa, and the enterprise tier has an API. For a manager at 50 or more properties, ask what the API exposes, whether it can push a result into your PMS, and who has built against it. Below that tier, the report is a document you read and a decision you key in, the same as the other per-report products. The category guide covers which specialists list Yardi, RealPage, Rent Manager and AppFolio if a native connection is the requirement.

Limitations and questions to ask

Ask what the screener review catches that the automated report does not, and what it adds to turnaround; a human step is a feature until it is the reason a report arrives on Monday for an applicant who toured on Friday. Ask how the screener’s notes are presented and whether they change the report or sit alongside it.

Ask how criminal records are filtered for the cities and counties you operate in, whether RentPrep or you maintains the filter, and how an entry that should have been excluded is caught. Ask who the consumer reporting agency is, who issues the adverse-action notice, how an applicant disputes a record, and how the product documents that every applicant was held to the same criteria. Ask what ResidentScore does with a thin file, because a low score without a bad act is the case the operators in our research improvise around with a double deposit.

Alternatives

The full tenant screening vendor list compares all nine vendors side by side. The two closest are the other per-report products. TransUnion SmartMove is the bureau’s own product at $25, $40 and $49 with same-day reports and no screener review described. RentSpree sells at $39.99 and $49.99 and adds bank-verified income and reference checks at the higher tier. A manager at 75 units or more who wants income read from bank data rather than a credit file should also look at Rent Butter.

AI visibility

The AI Shortlist Index will measure tenant screening when a prompt set for the category is approved, and the RentPrep row will appear here from that edition on.