Peter Lohmann argues the 3x rent rule has no scientific backing. No studies link income-to-rent ratios to evictions or missed payments, yet landlords use it anyway. If someone pays rent consistently, where the money comes from matters less than whether it shows up.
What works in tenant screening, nobody knows because all of the guidance and best practices around tenant screening, including all of this fraud stuff, there's really no science behind it. Like if you ask a property manager, what's the minimum income someone should have relative to the rent in order to afford an apartment? You know, a lot of property managers will say, oh, 3 times the rent, that's our requirement, 3 times the rent. And I always say, really? 3 times the rent? It's not 3.1, it's not 2.79, it's exactly 3. Where is that coming from? Well, the Answer is it's made up. No one has ever done a comprehensive study on what are the actual correlations between income relative to rent and outcomes, meaning evictions or skips. We're just kind of guessing. And so all of this is, is kind of made up in a lot of ways. Now, obviously you can definitively decide whether someone is, has a fraudulent pay stub or not. But what's interesting too about this, and you kind of touched on it, is like, do we really care if it's fraudulent if they pay the rent? Like, if the rent's getting paid every month, do we really care if they, quote, couldn't afford it, or if it was someone else's driver's license or whatever? I don't know, it's interesting to think about.
