How AI Tenant Screening Is Changing the Game for SA Landlords

The South African rental market presents unique challenges for landlords. Between rising defaults, complex regulations like the Rental Housing Act, and the sheer time involved in manually vetting applicants, finding reliable tenants has never been easy.

That’s where AI-powered tenant screening comes in.

The Problem with Traditional Screening

Most South African landlords still rely on a patchwork of manual checks:

Calling previous landlords (who may not respond)
Requesting payslips (which can be forged)
Running a single credit check and hoping for the best

This approach is slow, inconsistent, and leaves gaps that bad tenants exploit. A 2025 TPN survey found that over 12% of South African tenants are in arrears at any given time — a figure that proper screening could significantly reduce.

What AI Brings to the Table

Modern AI screening doesn’t replace credit checks — it layers intelligence on top of them. Here’s how:

1. Multi-Source Credit Analysis

Instead of a single-bureau check, AI aggregates data from TPN, TransUnion, and Experian to build a holistic picture. A tenant might have a clean record with one bureau but red flags with another.

2. Document Verification

AI can detect forged payslips, altered bank statements, and inconsistent employment records in seconds. What once required a forensic eye now happens automatically at upload time.

3. Affordability Modelling

The traditional rule of thumb — rent should be less than 30% of gross income — is just the starting point. AI models consider debt-to-income ratios, spending patterns, and employment stability to predict actual payment likelihood.

4. Behavioural Risk Scoring

By analysing patterns across thousands of tenancies, AI identifies risk signals that humans miss. Frequent address changes, gaps in rental history, and specific combinations of financial markers all feed into a composite risk score.

Compliance Made Simple

South African landlords must navigate POPIA when collecting and processing tenant data. AI screening platforms like Indlu handle this by:

Auto-generating POPIA consent forms
Logging data access and processing activities
Ensuring credit checks are conducted through authorised bureaux
Providing tenants with transparent access to their data

The Bottom Line

AI tenant screening isn’t about replacing human judgment — it’s about giving landlords better information to make informed decisions. For a sector where a single bad tenant can cost tens of thousands of rands in legal fees, damages, and lost rent, the investment in smarter screening pays for itself many times over.

Indlu’s AI screening is available from the Starter plan at R99/mo. Get started today.