RentGrow, a Massachusetts-based resident screening firm, recently released a report entitled “Trends in Applicant Traffic and Quality,” which shows a decline in the number of applicants communities are processing per apartment. Processing rates, which measure how many applicants a community is processing per apartment, are typically between 0.9 and 1 percent (or one application per apartment unit). According the report, this rate has dropped approximately 20% over the past 18 months. RentGrow also found that property managers have had to accept riskier tenant applications due to high vacancy rates. According to the report, applicant credit quality in the first quarter of 2009 was 1.7 percent lower than in the first quarter of 2008 and 3.9 percent lower than the first quarter of 2007. Read More…