Registry and criminal records for FCRA tenant screening
For tenant screening companies: sex-offender registry and criminal records in one FCRA order, with the states that restrict housing use of registry information applied for you, a live search in every state of the applicant’s address history, exact date-of-birth matching, and a live re-check of every record before it reaches an application.
Deciding whether to rent to someone? Use an FCRA workflow.
FCRA workflows are built primarily for tenant screening and hiring decisions. If a result will help decide whether to rent to someone, the check has to run as an FCRA-regulated consumer report, with a permissible purpose, consent, accuracy controls and a dispute path for the person. Our standard search and API are not a consumer report. FCRA workflows run through FCRA Partner Access, for background check companies and screening platforms under a written FCRA agreement.
FCRA pricing is quoted per partner, so contact us for pricing.
Where registry data is withheld, and why
Tenant screening is where registry information is most restricted. These rules are applied before an answer is built, against each registry that holds the applicant.
| State | What an FCRA order does | Why |
|---|---|---|
| California | Registry information withheld for every purpose. | Megan’s Law information may be used only to protect a person at risk; employment, education, housing, insurance, credit and business-service uses are prohibited unless another law authorizes them. Cal. Penal Code § 290.46(j) |
| Nevada | Registry information withheld from tenant screening. | Nevada restricts use of its community-notification information for housing and accommodations (NRS 179B.270). |
| New Jersey | Registry information withheld from tenant screening. | New Jersey bars use of disclosed registry information for housing or accommodations (N.J.S.A. 2C:7-16(c)). |
Background, not legal advice. These rules are applied conservatively and reviewed with counsel; your own counsel is the right reader of your facts.
Built against the failures that cost tenant screeners
The exposure is false positives
The costly cases in this market have been about the wrong record on the wrong person — name-only matches, duplicated entries, a label the record did not support — not about failing to screen. FCRA orders are designed against exactly those failures.
Duplicates count against you
Showing the same proceeding twice has itself been treated as an accuracy failure. The same person on several registries comes back as one record, not one entry per registry.
Labels must match the record
Every furnished criminal record carries its type and its disposition as the record holds it, so a booking is never presented as a conviction and an old dismissal never reaches the report.
For how a registry check fits a rental application, see how to screen tenants for sex offenders.
How a tenant screening order flows
From rental application to the landlord’s decision, in six steps. The screening company owns the applicant relationship; we are the regulated data layer underneath it.
- The applicant applies and consents. Your platform collects the rental application, the FCRA disclosure and the applicant’s authorization. The applicant’s full date of birth and address history come with it.
- You place one FCRA order. The order names the landlord or property manager as the end user, the purpose as tenant screening, the property’s state as the use location, and asks for the sex-offender search, the criminal search, or both.
- We search live where the applicant has lived. Each search runs live in every state of the address history and the property’s state, alongside our stored data for every other registry, and records how each source answered.
- The rules run before anything is furnished. Exact date-of-birth matching, the registry restrictions on housing use, the federal seven-year rule and state conviction limits, dispute suppressions, and a live re-check of every remaining record.
- You build the tenant report. The order comes back with each search’s result, the furnished records and their match basis, the counts of what was held back and why, a coverage table and a signed PDF.
- The landlord decides; the applicant can see and dispute. Adjudication and any adverse action stay with you and the landlord. Put the consumer portal code in your notice, and the applicant can see exactly what we furnished and dispute any item.
What reaches a tenant report, by where the record is held
Registry restrictions follow the registry that holds the information, not the property’s state. A person registered in Nevada is withheld from a tenant report for a rental in Arizona, because Nevada restricts housing use of its own registry information.
| Information | In an FCRA tenant screening order | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Registry information held by California | Withheld for tenant screening — and for every other purpose | Cal. Penal Code § 290.46(j)(2) |
| Registry information held by Nevada | Withheld for tenant screening | NRS 179B.270 |
| Registry information held by New Jersey | Withheld for tenant screening | N.J.S.A. 2C:7-16(c) |
| Registry information held by other states | Furnished on an exact date-of-birth match after a live re-check | — |
| Criminal records, any state | Federal seven-year rule on non-convictions; conviction limits where a cap state applies | 15 U.S.C. § 1681c; state caps |
Each rule is marked for counsel review and recorded with its citation in the order’s evidence. The criminal rules are explained in the FCRA seven-year rule.
An applicant who has moved across states
An applicant for an apartment in Phoenix lived in Las Vegas until 2023 and in Denver before that. The screening company orders both searches with the purpose tenant screening, the property’s state as Arizona, and all three states in the address history.
- Live search: Arizona, Nevada and Colorado are searched live; other registries come from stored data, each with its date in the coverage table.
- Registry: a Nevada registration with the applicant’s exact date of birth exists. It is withheld — Nevada restricts housing use of its registry information — and counted as withheld for jurisdiction, never shown.
- Criminal: a 2016 dismissed arrest in Colorado is removed by the federal seven-year rule. A 2021 conviction in Arizona passes the rules, is re-checked live at the court, and is furnished with its disposition.
- Result: the registry search reports no reportable record with one withheld; the criminal search reports one record. The landlord sees what can lawfully be reported, and the screening company can show exactly why the rest was not.
Fair-chance housing rules sit on top
A growing number of cities and counties limit how a landlord may use criminal history in a rental decision — when it may be asked about, which records may be considered, and what review must happen first. New York City goes further than most: a landlord that knowingly receives criminal history it may not consider can be presumed to have relied on it, which makes an over-inclusive report a liability for the landlord.
Those rules govern the landlord’s decision, and they belong to the landlord and the screening company. What a data layer can do is keep the report from carrying more than it should: exact matches only, items past the reporting limits removed, restricted registry information withheld, and a clear record of all of it.
Common tenant screening mistakes
- Searching only the property’s state. Registrations follow people; search every state they have lived in.
- Treating a namesake as a match. A common name with a plausible age is not the applicant.
- Reporting registry information a state restricts for housing. California, Nevada and New Jersey restrict it whoever runs the search.
- Reporting an old dismissal. Non-convictions past seven years do not belong in a consumer report.
- Calling a partial search clear. If a relevant state did not answer, the report should say incomplete.
- No way to show the work. When an applicant disputes, you need the coverage, the match basis and the evidence for that day.
The controls on every FCRA order
Applied in order to every search in an order — sex offender and criminal — before a single record leaves.
End user, purpose and consent on every order
An order is refused unless its end user is registered and certified, its permissible purpose is one that end user holds under your agreement, and it carries your consent attestation. A refused order is still recorded.
Exact date of birth, or nothing
Only a record that matches the consumer’s full date of birth can be furnished. A name-only or birth-year match is withheld — name-only matching is the pattern regulators have penalized screening vendors for.
Searched live in the consumer’s states
Every search runs in real time in each state of the address history on the order and the state where the job or housing is — not only against stored data — so a recent registration or filing in those states is not missed. Everywhere else, the coverage table shows the date the data is current to; an order sent without addresses or a use state says so, row by row.
Re-verified before anything is furnished
Every remaining record is re-checked against the official record at the time of the request. A record that is no longer listed is withheld; a source that cannot answer makes the result incomplete rather than clear.
Disputed records stay out
When a consumer dispute ends with a record deleted or found not to be theirs, that record is suppressed from every later regulated answer about them.
Never “clear” on a partial search
An answer is clear only when every state that matters was searched live and answered, every other source answered, and nothing reportable was found. Otherwise it says incomplete — and the coverage table shows exactly which source did not answer.
An evidence record for every order
Purpose, end user and certification, the identifiers searched, what each source said, the control version that applied, and every record furnished or withheld with its reason.
What we handle, and what stays with you and the landlord
What an FCRA order handles
- California, Nevada and New Jersey registry restrictions
- Exact date-of-birth matching and duplicate collapsing
- Seven-year rule and state conviction limits on criminal records
- Live search in the applicant’s states, and live re-verification
- A coverage table, official-source evidence and a verifiable PDF
- A disputes API and a consumer portal for what we furnished
What stays with you and your client
- Disclosure, authorization and consent from the consumer
- Pre-adverse and adverse-action notices to the consumer
- The hiring, tenancy or eligibility decision itself
- Notices to your own end users, under your agreement with them
The FCRA Orders API · The disputes API · The applicant’s consumer portal
Show the landlord what was searched
A clear answer is only as good as what was searched. Every FCRA search shows its work, source by source, and keeps what the official source said.
Live, not just stored
Each search runs in real time in every state of the address history on the order and the state where the job or housing is. A relevant state that cannot be searched live makes the result incomplete — never clear. Registries a state bars for the purpose are not searched at all, and the coverage table says so.
Coverage you can read
One row per source: searched live or from data, when it was checked, the date the data is current to, how many candidates it produced and how many were furnished or withheld.
What the live search saw
Every live check — match and no-match alike — keeps hash-pinned evidence: the official source’s own response wherever we receive it directly, and always a labelled record of what that live search returned. Each capture says which kind it is, and every one is listed in the PDF.
Verifiable by anyone
The PDF is stored once, so its hash never changes. The signed receipt carries that hash; /verify checks a file against it in the browser, and the file never leaves the device.
| Source | Mode | Checked | Data current to | Found |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| County court, Illinois | Live | 14:02 UTC | — | 1 furnished, 1 withheld |
| State corrections, Illinois | Live | 14:02 UTC | — | None |
| Court records, Wisconsin | Data | 14:01 UTC | Oct 1, 2026 | None |
Holding a report PDF? Verify it — the check runs in your browser and the file is never uploaded.
A consumer portal and disputes, handled for you
The person a report is about can see what was furnished and dispute it directly. You do not have to build the consumer side of the data layer.
See exactly what was reported
Every order carries an access code for its consumer portal. With it, their last name and date of birth, the consumer sees every item furnished in that order — and without a code they can still request their file. We never ask for a Social Security number.
Dispute any item
A dispute — opened by you through the API or by the consumer in the portal — starts a reinvestigation with the authority that holds the record, on a 30-day clock from receipt, and the result is reported back.
Corrections reach every partner
When a dispute changes or removes a record, a record.corrected event goes to every partner that was furnished it, and the record is suppressed from later orders about that consumer.
From agreement to your first order
Regulated access is a separate grant on your account, not a setting you can turn on yourself.
1. Agree the scope
We review your business and the permissible purposes you serve, and sign a written FCRA agreement that fixes those purposes, your end-user certifications and the controls applied to every answer.
2. We enable your key
Regulated access is switched on for your account only after the agreement is signed, and only for the purposes it names. Standard self-serve access stays exactly as it was, and never carries regulated use.
3. Register end users, then place orders
Register each employer or landlord once, with its permissible purposes and your certification. Each order then names the end user, the purpose and your consent attestation, carries the consumer’s full name and date of birth, and runs a sex-offender search, a criminal search, or both.
4. Get an answer you can stand behind
Orders run in the background and report back by signed webhook. Each search runs live in the states that matter and comes with a source-by-source coverage table. Only records that pass every control are furnished, each with its match evidence and the time it was verified; everything else is a count by reason, and the whole order is kept as evidence.
FCRA tenant screening questions
Can a landlord check the sex offender registry?
A landlord can look at a public registry, but some states restrict using registry information for housing at all: California, Nevada and New Jersey among them. When a tenant screening company includes a registry search in its report, the FCRA applies as well. The safest route is a screening company whose data layer applies those state rules before anything is reported.
Do tenant background checks show sex offenders?
Many do, if the screening company includes a registry search. Through our FCRA orders, registry records are reported only on an exact date-of-birth match after a live check, and never from states that restrict housing use of their registry information.
How far back does a tenant background check go?
For criminal records in a consumer report, non-conviction items generally cannot be reported after seven years; convictions are not limited federally, but several states cap them. Registry status is reported as it stands today.
Is tenant screening covered by the FCRA?
Yes. A tenant screening report prepared by a consumer reporting agency for a rental decision is a consumer report, so permissible purpose, accuracy, adverse action and dispute rules apply.
Which registry information is withheld from tenant screening?
California’s, for every purpose, and Nevada’s and New Jersey’s for tenant screening. All three states restrict housing uses of their registry information. The rules are checked against each registry that holds the person, so restricted information cannot reach the report inside another state’s record.
Are criminal records restricted the same way?
No — those registry statutes cover registry information. Criminal records run through the criminal search’s own rules: the federal seven-year limit on non-convictions and conservative state conviction limits, applied before anything is furnished.
Can a property manager use this directly?
Regulated access is for the screening company that furnishes the tenant report. A property manager gets regulated screening from that company; the standard API can serve non-regulated work like monitoring a property’s area, but never an application decision.
Does this make a tenancy decision fair-housing compliant?
No. Fair-housing and fair-chance rules govern how a landlord uses a report, and they vary by state and city. An FCRA order handles what the data layer carries; the decision and its process stay with the landlord and the screening company.
What happens if an applicant disputes a record?
If the record came from us, the applicant can dispute it with us directly. We reinvestigate with the authority that holds it on a 30-day clock, tell the applicant the result, suppress a record that is deleted, and identify every partner that received it.
Add regulated registry and criminal data to your tenant reports
Tell us where your clients lease and the volume you screen. We will set up the agreement, enable FCRA orders on your key and open your sandbox.
Request FCRA Partner Access How the program works
FCRA pricing is quoted per partner — contact us for pricing. Standard self-serve access is separate and is not a consumer report.