Referencing reports will show as a pass, a conditional pass, or a fail. For some situations, a Conditional Pass can be updated to a Conditions Met. We’ll cover that in the second part of this guide. If a report is a conditional pass, Goodlord recommends that the tenant pays the rent upfront, secures a suitable guarantor, or is not liable for the rent (i.e permitted occupier). There are several reasons why a report might be a conditional pass.

ID

An ID check will come back as a conditional pass if:

• The ID is not supplied or is invalid
• The ID does not comply with the right-to-rent guidelines (England only)
• There is no proof of name change
• No photo ID has been provided

The full list of acceptable, Right to Rent-compliant documents can be found at gov.uk. The condition of the ID section will always be to review the ID in person and to update the platform. Once you have seen the ID in person to corroborate that it belongs to the person who is being referenced, you are able to have the report section updated to show as Conditions Met.

Credit check

A credit check will come back as a conditional pass if:

• The declared active CCJ totals less than £1,000.
• The declared satisfied CCJ totals between £1,000 to £5,000.
• The bankruptcy or IVA is satisfied within 1-6 years.
• The tenant could not be located on the electoral roll.
• The tenants live outside the UK.

If a tenant cannot be located on the electoral roll or lives outside of the UK, you can confirm the credit check by looking at documents that show proof of address (e.g. a bank or utility statement). Once you have seen suitable proof of address, you are able to have the report section updated to show as Conditions Met.

Income

An income check will come back as a conditional pass if:

• The tenant is a student.
• The tenant does not meet our affordability ratio (2.5 x the annual rent or 3.0 x for a guarantor).
• The tenant has been self-employed for fewer than twelve months and does not have a submitted tax return form.
• The tenant is unemployed.
• The employer has not verified the income.
• The tenant has not provided the necessary documents to verify their income.

The conditions that might be applied to the financial section of referencing include the tenant being required to have a guarantor, the tenant not being liable for rent or the combined affordability for the remaining tenants meeting the overall cost of the rent for the tenancy. Once these conditions have been met, there is no need to notify us of this on the Goodlord platform. The reference report will remain with an overall conditional pass.

Residential

A residential check will come back as a conditional pass if:

• The rent was paid late
• The tenancy could not be verified
• There is minor damage to the property.

Find out more about our referencing process from our criteria-related articles. The possible conditions for the residential section include adding a guarantor to the tenants or the tenant not being liable for the rent (Added as a permitted occupier rather than a tenant). Once the condition has been met, you do not need to notify us of this. The reference report will remain with an overall conditional pass.

Overriding a conditional pass

Once the conditions for ID and Credit have been met, the public API has the capability for a user to inform Goodlord, at which point a report for that particular tenant or guarantor will be updated, and the new report sent back to you. This is explained in the Patch-Subject-Outcome-Conditions sections

When an application is going through referencing, we provide updates for noticeable changes or advancements in the process. These are called touchpoints, and they're a valuable way of keeping you informed and making our product more self-serve. Touchpoints begin once an applicant has submitted their reference and they finish when a final outcome has been given.

With the Goodlord Referencing API you can retrieve touchpoints for a referencing applicant using the Get Subject Touchpoints endpoint.

These comments are created for each section [identity, residential, income, credit (stated as category)] of referencing and can be authored by:

• System - Automatically generated messages by the Goodlord system
• Person - Comments made by referencing executives (internal Goodlord staff)
• Agent - Comments made by letting agents

subjectId: The unique identifier for the referencing applicant

The author object contains information about who created the touchpoint:

• type: The type of author (system, person, or agent) - this is the primary field
• id: Internal Goodlord identifier, only present for authors of type "person" (referencing executives)
• email: Email address, only present for authors of type "agent"

The following shows example responses from the Get Subject Touchpoints endpoint:

System Type Example - Automatically generated system message:

[
  {
    "id": "78230093-8035-4aad-81db-9221cd5019a0",
    "subjectId": "a6770136-63f0-4315-9d9e-3700329a4b91",
    "category": "residential",
    "author": {
      "type": "system"
    },
    "message": "We're awaiting additional information from applicant.",
    "createdAt": "2024-10-01T14:35:12.189Z"
  }
]

Person Type Example - Comment from a referencing executive:

[
  {
    "id": "6e10af0c-ae9c-4c80-ac09-aa9f253d5f97",
    "subjectId": "a6770136-63f0-4315-9d9e-3700329a4b91",
    "category": "income",
    "author": {
      "id": "df603e71-0e12-4ad3-b13b-02225563ac85",
      "type": "person"
    },
    "message": "As the applicant has recently started employment we are not able to accept the reference on this occasion",
    "createdAt": "2024-10-02T09:20:33.456Z"
  }
]