Where Are Tenant Eviction Screening Reports Reported?

Landlords pull eviction reports from a handful of commercial screening services that aggregate court and government data. Those services draw on county clerk filings, state‑run portals, and nationwide credit‑bureau feeds.

• Experian RentBureau tenant‑screening service, CoreLogic eviction data platform, and TransUnion SmartMove public‑record feed collect county‑level eviction filings and bundle them into a landlord's screening report.
• California eCourt portal and Texas Public Access to Court Electronic Records transmit docket information to aggregators via API feeds, keeping reports current.
• County clerk offices publish eviction notices as PDF or XML; screening firms scrape those files each night to update their databases.
• Credit bureaus list eviction entries under the 'public record' section of consumer reports, adhering to FCRA's seven‑year retention rule.
• National Rental Database and Eviction Information Exchange aggregate multi‑state filings, giving landlords a broader view of a tenant's eviction history.

The eviction history in a screening report originates from a mix of public courts and private data firms that collect, standardize, and supply the records. Courts file the original judgments; aggregators transform them into searchable entries that landlords rely on, as we saw earlier.

• County and municipal clerk‑of‑court offices store eviction filings and judgments, then publish them to state court information portals.
• State court‑wide data centers (for example, California's Automated Court Management System) aggregate local records into searchable statewide databases.
• State housing or consumer‑protection agencies maintain eviction registries that feed directly into screening platforms (e.g., New York City Housing Court).
• Major credit bureaus' public‑record divisions - Experian RentBureau, TransUnion SmartMove, Equifax - receive court data and add it to consumer credit files.
• Specialized tenant‑screening companies such as CoreLogic, LexisNexis Risk Solutions, and RentPrep pull from court and credit sources, then package the information for landlords.
• Nationwide eviction aggregators (e.g., the National Unified Residential Eviction Database) consolidate multiple public feeds into a single repository for screening services.

Courts transmit final eviction judgments into electronic case files, and those files become the raw feed screeners rely on.

1. A judge signs an eviction order; the clerk logs the decision in the court's digital docket system.
2. The state's judicial data hub extracts the judgment's key fields - case ID, filing date, disposition - and formats them per the National Court Reporting Standard.
3. Under state‑mandated timelines, the hub pushes the formatted feed to commercial aggregators such as CoreLogic and LexisNexis (as we covered above).
4. Aggregators scrub duplicates, apply the Fair Credit Reporting Act's 7‑year retention rule, and bundle the cleaned records into nightly eviction‑history updates.
5. Screening platforms subscribe to those updates, ingest the latest file, and merge it with other public‑record sources to produce the eviction report landlords view when you apply for a rental.

Eviction records live in the public court systems that issued the judgment - typically county clerk sites, state judiciary portals, and the federal PACER database. As we covered above, these feeds power the screening reports landlords rely on.

County clerks post docket entries and final judgments on their own websites; examples include the New York Unified Court System and Florida's Clerk of Courts portal. Many states aggregate the data in a single judicial interface, such as Texas Judicial Portal or California Courts' e‑search. Federal eviction actions appear in PACER, though they are rare.

Access rules differ by jurisdiction, and some states restrict how long records stay searchable, which shapes the visibility discussed in the next section on state laws.

state laws shaping eviction report visibility

California caps public eviction filings at five years, but permits judgment entries to linger for seven, mirroring the federal baseline. New York recently enacted a similar five‑year ceiling for filing records while preserving the seven‑year limit on court judgments. (As we covered above, courts feed these data points to screening agencies, which then publish them on tenant reports.)

Illinois, Texas, Florida, and most other states default to the Fair Credit Reporting Act's seven‑year rule for all eviction judgments. No statewide statute trims the period unless a judge orders an expungement or a local ordinance dictates an earlier removal. Federal Fair Credit Reporting Act guidelines govern this uniformity.

Locate your eviction history before you submit a rental application. Having the report in hand lets you spot problems early and avoid surprise rejections (as covered above).

• Order a tenant‑screening report that includes eviction data from thecreditpeople.com.
• Call the clerk's office in any county where an eviction might have been filed; request the case docket and judgment details.
• Search the state's online public records portal for eviction entries, if the state maintains one.
• Check the seven‑year reporting window set by the FCRA; entries older than that should not appear.
• Compare the listed name, Social Security number, and address to your own records to confirm correct matches.

A verified copy of your eviction history gives you leverage to dispute errors and present accurate information when landlords run their screening reports.

Eviction records stay on a tenant screening report for up to seven years from the filing date, the maximum period allowed by the Federal Fair Credit Reporting Act Federal Fair Credit Reporting Act seven‑year limit. State statutes may shorten that window - several municipalities purge entries after three years - but they cannot extend it beyond the federal cap (see the state‑laws section above).

Dismissed actions still count as civil proceedings, so they follow the same seven‑year timeline unless a court order mandates earlier deletion. A handful of non‑FCRA databases occasionally retain entries indefinitely, yet most landlords draw from FCRA‑compliant services, making perpetual reporting rare.

Spotting errors in a tenant eviction screening report means scanning key sections for mismatches, omissions, and outdated entries. Because reports pull data from courts, agencies, and public databases, mistakes often hide in dates, case numbers, or claim status.

1. Verify personal identifiers. Compare name, Social Security number, and birth date to your government ID; any typo signals a false match.
2. Cross‑check eviction dates. The Fair Credit Reporting Act seven‑year rule removes negative entries older than seven years, so dates beyond that window should be marked 'expired'.
3. Match case numbers to court records. Access the county docket (often free online) and confirm the cited case aligns with the alleged eviction, as we covered in the courts reporting section.
4. Look for 'dismissed' or 'settled' labels. A dismissal erases liability; the report must reflect that status even if the case appears.
5. Request a corrected copy. Send a written dispute to the screening company, attach supporting documents, and cite the exact error; the agency must investigate within 30 days.

Dismissed evictions linger in eviction reports because data furnishes - courts, collection agencies, and state registries - often transmit records before a dismissal is entered, and many reporting services refresh only monthly or quarterly. State statutes may also mandate that any filed eviction stay on a tenant's screening report for up to seven years, regardless of outcome, creating a lag between the court's final order and the database's purge.

To clear the entry, file a dispute under the Fair Credit Reporting Act fair credit reporting act dispute process. Request the original filing, then supply the dismissal judgment or settlement paperwork.

Direct the furnisher to delete the record; if they refuse, request a reinvestigation within 30 days and consider a state‑level complaint if local law offers a shorter retention period. As we covered above, correcting the eviction history improves future screening reports and prevents landlords from seeing a false negative.

When a tenant incurs eviction judgments in multiple states, each court records the outcome in its own jurisdictional database, and national aggregators pull those entries into a single screening report that landlords see as one consolidated eviction history. For example, an eviction filed in Texas and a separate judgment in California appear side‑by‑side on the report, preserving the original dates and court identifiers.

State participation varies; some jurisdictions upload records automatically, while others require a manual feed or opt out entirely, which can leave gaps in a tenant's cross‑border eviction picture. Consequently, landlords relying on screening reports should verify whether the aggregators cover the specific states involved, especially if the tenant's history spans regions with restrictive reporting laws (see Consumer Financial Protection Bureau guidance on eviction reporting).

A wrongful eviction on a screening report triggers the same dispute process the Fair Credit Reporting Act requires. First, request the full report from the bureau that supplied the landlord's data. Then, send a concise, certified‑mail letter stating the inaccuracy, attaching the court docket or settlement that proves the eviction never occurred. The bureau must investigate within 30 days, delete the entry if the evidence is clear, and send a corrected report to any landlord who accessed the original.

For instance, Maria discovered a 2022 eviction listed after a judgment was vacated. She downloaded the report from Experian, mailed a dispute with the vacated‑judgment order, and received a 're‑investigation complete' notice ten days later. The entry vanished, and her next rental application showed a clean eviction history. (See Fair Credit Reporting Act guidelines for detailed timelines.)