This covers adding a lease listing to Jointly and switching on tenant screening. If your listing deal already exists, skip to Setting up lease screening below.
For what happens after a tenant applies — how they complete the screening, what it costs them, what notifications go out and what to do when a report will not open — see Tenant Screening Process.
Adding your listing to Jointly
Click ADD DEAL in the upper right corner of your Deals page.
Select Landlord for Who are you working with?
Enter your landlord's information, and add a Property Manager if you have one. When you assign tasks later, you can choose whether the landlord or the property manager signs.
Link your Jointly listing to the MLS. If the property is not active on the MLS yet, select No — you can connect it later.
A listing created on the MLS just now may not appear in Jointly straight away.
Setting up lease screening
After adding your listing you will see a Set Up Listing task on your Representation page.
Each step of that task builds your listing details and your application requirements.
Listing details — what appears in your Listing Portal.
Application Requirements — to add tenant screening (powered by TransUnion), answer Yes to Would you like to request Credit & Score, Criminal Background and Eviction Proceedings Reports?
The TransUnion screening covers the Credit Report & Score, Criminal Background Report and Eviction Proceedings, for $50.
TransUnion ShareAble lets applicants share their credit report through a soft pull, which does not affect their credit score.
Who gets access to the reports
Choose who should be able to see the screening reports once a tenant submits. The listing agent, the listing agent's team and clients are pre-selected.
Tick everyone who will need to see a report before you process the application. Under the agreement with TransUnion the viewers have to be named before the report is generated — so once a report exists, nobody can be added to it.
You can still change the list up to that point, including after the listing is live and after tenants have applied. The landlord is the one people forget, and it is the most expensive one to forget. Tenant Screening Process has the steps for changing the list, and what to do when a landlord cannot see a report.
Fees and when the tenant pays
You can review the breakdown of fees and adjust the Application Fee. The $50 screening cost is the floor, so you cannot set the application fee lower than that.
The tenant is set to pay the application fee by default, and you choose when they are charged: once you have reviewed the application, or immediately when they complete it.
Anything you charge above the screening cost is the balance, and you choose who receives it. For the full breakdown — who can be paid the balance, the convenience fee, and how to have the tenant not be the payer at all — see Tenant Screening Process.
Additional screening documentation
You can require tenants to upload more documentation when they apply — proof of income, ID, and so on.
Once you save and complete the Set Up Listing task, tenants who apply to your listing can complete their screening in Jointly and pay the application fee.
The TXR Lease Application is added automatically for tenants to complete when they apply.
How do I change the set-up after I have saved it?
Click the gear icon in the top left corner. From there you can update any of the set-up tasks you have already completed, and saving your changes updates your application requirements.
The property address is wrong — how do I fix it?
Fix it in one place: the Listing Agreement (Lease) step. The other forms on the deal — including the lease itself — take the property address from that step, which is why correcting it there fixes all of them, and why correcting it on an individual form does not.
Click the gear icon in the top left corner, as above.
Open the Listing Agreement (Lease) step.
Correct the address.
Save the step. Nothing propagates until you do — closing it without saving leaves the old address in place everywhere.
After saving, check any form you have already worked on to confirm it now shows the corrected address.
Frequently asked questions
Can tenants apply if I am a non-member MLS user?
No. The non-member MLS form set does not include the lease application forms, so tenants cannot apply through Jointly on that plan. You can still upload documents and run the screening.
Where do I find the rest?
Tenant Screening Process answers the questions that come up once the listing is live — who can add the screening, how many tenants one application covers, what the tenant pays and when, what notifications go out, and what to do when a report is slow, expired or will not open.