Being a good judge of character is huge in the small time rental business. They can make you or break you for sure. Where as the corp. that own multi-campuses of large complex are run differently. Still they don't want bad tenants neither.

so if for example, you the landlord wanted to rent out at say $2000/month, and your lease demands first, last, and deposit up front, and a section 8'er comes to you but is only cleared for $1200/month (their portion and gubmints portion), and has nothing up front you have to still give it to them?

wow, that IS rent control! being a landlord in CA then doesn't seem lucrative for a steady income stream. it's almost as if CA want the rent to barely cover expenses and so one only profits by selling it once it appreciates. that's an aweful long time to tie up capital.:(

No, they will have to qualify for the total amount. Section 8 normally only covers a portion of the rent and the rest has to be paid by the renter. If they feel that the can cover it, then we must rent to them. A bit different with single family homes. CA was not this way until the past 5-7 years. Its gone off the fking deep end with all the left nut jobs in office and voting. A lot of my friends are dumping their units getting out of CA to reinvest it elsewhere.

I understand, you need to play the odds and probabilities. I'm sure that I'd do the same.

Making sure they're good for the rent is one thing but not everything. Tell them you'd like to run the lease agreement over to them to look it over... at their current residence. Then you can see how they live and how they respect someone else's property. If they balk at this look for another prospect

While I managed my building myself I used these folks. They have a local office in Spokane.

https://www.acranet.com/tenant-screening/

I would send the prospective tenants the forms and get them returned to me. I then submitted them. As a landlord I could choose whether to get a detailed report or just a yes/no based on their scores. This did background for criminal acts, employment/income verification, eviction search, yada yada. I was pretty happy with their turnaround and customer service. Last year I hired a property manager but if I took back the responsibility I'd likely go back to using them.

look in their car. it's a very good indicator of how people live and what kind of environment they will create and tolerate for themselves. Did this when I rented rooms and acted as an "agent" for a family rental property.

mysmartmove.com
This is a transunion site, works great. Criminal background, credit check which you have the option of viewing along with past evictions and income verification. It is cheap, gives you the option of paying or the tenant. Will even give you an accept or decline decision. Has never let me down. All my tenants pay like clockwork.