Why You Should Look at More Than Just a Credit Score
In Ontario, the Ontario Human Rights Commission's policy says landlords may request rental history, credit references and credit checks, and that a lack of rental or credit history should not be viewed negatively. (Source) For a fuller guide, see screening tenants fairly.
You've just shown a unit to someone who made a great first impression. They're employed, presentable and say they got on well with their last landlord. Then you check their credit and the score is low. Lots of landlords will tell you to forget it. Hold on: don't write them off just yet.
Credit scores rise when you borrow and repay lenders, again and again. The ideal tenant, in theory, doesn't borrow beyond their means, so they may have a thin credit history. The part of the score most landlords care about is payment history. It's quite possible to have a great tenant who pays on time, had a good relationship with a past landlord and is responsible, but has a low score. Tenants are often younger and earlier in their working lives than homeowners.
So while I'm a big advocate of checking credit, the score alone isn't the best way to spot a problem tenant.
If you're being diligent, ask for landlord references, and call as many previous landlords as you can. Ask how the tenancy went and how they kept the place. From personal experience: I rented to someone with a low score who had recently finished school and had been at the same job for two years. Their previous landlord described a quiet, reliable tenant, and I've never had an issue.
Talk to the applicant, too. There can be good reasons for a low score: they're new to credit, they recently took on new credit, or they're paying down old debt. None of those says much about how they'll treat you as a landlord. Cover all the bases, but don't base the decision on a three-digit number alone.
Do you base tenancy decisions on payment history?
Originally published December 14, 2012. Updated October 21, 2026: we added the Ontario Human Rights Commission note above, and removed a link that no longer works, a third-party chart, and the name of the person whose article we cited.