Seven years is the common line
Most Dallas properties apply a seven-year felony lookback. A conviction older than seven years frequently falls outside the window the property screens against; one inside it gets weighed against the property’s stated policy.
That is a description of what properties do, not a rule about what a record means. Policies vary between operators and sometimes between assets owned by the same operator, which is the whole reason background-friendly locating tracks them individually.
What moves the outcome
| Variable | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Offense age | The largest single factor, and the one that improves on its own |
| Offense class | Violent, drug, and property offenses are weighed differently by different operators |
| Disposition | A dismissal, a deferred adjudication, and a conviction are three different records |
| Pending charges | Frequently treated separately from closed cases |
| Income multiple | The first gate at nearly every property, before the record is weighed at all |
Note the last row. Income is still the number that decides it. Most Dallas properties want 3x the rent in gross monthly income, some 2.5x, a few 2x. A renter with a record who clears the multiple is in a materially different position from one who does not, and that is true at every property on the list.
Texas-specific terms worth knowing
Deferred adjudication. A disposition in which a court defers a finding of guilt while a person completes community supervision. It is not the same as a conviction, and it can present differently in a screening.
Order of nondisclosure. A Texas mechanism that restricts disclosure of certain criminal records to the general public, though not to all entities.
Expungement. A separate mechanism, with different eligibility, that destroys records.
State jail felony. A Texas felony classification below third degree. Some property criteria distinguish it; many do not.
Whether you qualify for nondisclosure or expunction is a legal question. Legal Aid of NorthWest Texas serves eligible North Texas residents. We do not give legal advice. What we can tell you is that a record that no longer surfaces in a screening changes the property set, because screening is what properties act on.
Blanket exclusions are the exception, not the norm
HUD’s 2016 guidance flagged disparate-impact exposure for blanket criminal-history exclusions in housing. That is a substantial part of why individualized assessment exists in this industry at all, and why “we review case by case” is a real category rather than a marketing line.
How the record actually surfaces
Dallas properties screen through RentGrow, CoreLogic SafeRent, TransUnion SmartMove, RealPage, Experian RentBureau, and Contemporary Information Corp. Criminal records come from county and state sources, with Dallas County criminal records among them.
The vendor reports; the property decides. Two buildings using the same vendor can reach different conclusions on the same record because they set different thresholds inside it.
If a property denies you based in whole or part on a consumer report, federal law requires an adverse action notice naming the reporting agency. If what it relied on is inaccurate, that notice tells you who to dispute with.
We never see any of it. We do not obtain, request, receive, or store your screening report, and there is no permissible purpose under the FCRA for a locator to pull one.
What to do with this
If your conviction is more than seven years old, say so plainly. It puts you outside the lookback at most properties and widens the list immediately.
If it is inside seven years, the question becomes which properties review individually — see properties that review case by case. That is a tracked list, not a guess.
Either way, send the offense class, the year, and your gross monthly income. Background-friendly locating starts there, and we describe what properties require rather than promising approval.