Blog№ 004

How to verify a pay stub in 2026

A fake pay stub now looks exactly like a real one. It still has to add up. Four checks a leasing team can run in five minutes, and what to do when one fails.

A pay stub used to be hard to fake well. The fonts were off, the logo was blurry, the columns did not line up. A leasing agent could catch most of them by looking.

That stopped being true. In a 2026 Checkr survey of 1,400 landlords and property managers, 67% said application fraud is harder to detect than it was a year ago. Looking is no longer a check.

Figure 1 · One dot is one apartment operator
75

apartment owners, developers and managers answered the survey.

Seventy of 75 operators saw fraud in a year. Fifty-nine of those 70 saw falsified income documents.National Multifamily Housing Council, Pulse Survey on rental application fraud and bad debt, January 2024.

The National Multifamily Housing Council asked 75 large apartment operators about fraud in early 2024. Seventy of them had dealt with it in the previous twelve months. Of those 70, 59 had been handed falsified pay stubs, employment references or other income documents.

The cost shows up later. In a RealPage survey of 402 people who decide rental applications, 73% said more than half of the fraud they see is found after move-in.

A fake stub can look right. It has to add up.

Payroll software does arithmetic. Someone editing a PDF usually changes the number they care about, which is gross pay, and leaves the rest. The mismatch that creates is the thing to look for.

Run these four checks on every stub, for every applicant, in the same order.

Figure 2 · Four checks on one pay stub
Harbor Freight Co.Aug 16 to Aug 31
Gross pay
3,900.00
Federal income tax
468.00
Social Security
198.00
Medicare
56.55
Net pay
3,177.45
Gross, year to date
54,600.00
  1. Gross minus deductions equals net3,900.00 − 722.55 = 3,177.45
  2. Medicare is 1.45% of gross3,900.00 × 1.45% = 56.55
  3. Social Security is 6.2% of grossShould be 241.80. The stub shows 198.00.
  4. Year to date matches the pay periods54,600 is 14 periods. August 31 is the 16th.
  5. 2 of 4 checks fail.Do not decline on this alone. Ask for the bank statements that show the deposits.
This stub adds up at a glance. Net pay is right and Medicare is right. Two lines only fail when you do the arithmetic the payroll system would have done.

1. Gross minus deductions equals net

Add up every deduction on the stub and subtract the total from gross pay. The result should match net pay to the cent.

2. Social Security and Medicare match the rates

The employee share of Social Security is 6.2% of gross wages. Medicare is 1.45%. These rates are set by law and published by the IRS. Multiply gross pay by each rate and compare.

Two honest reasons the result can come in slightly low. Pre-tax deductions such as health insurance reduce the wages those taxes apply to. And Social Security stops once a worker passes the annual wage base, which is $184,500 for 2026. A stub that is a few dollars under is normal. A stub that is 20% under is not.

3. Year to date matches the pay periods

Divide year-to-date gross by gross pay for the period. The answer is the number of pay periods the applicant has been paid for this year. Check it against the calendar and the pay frequency. A mid-year hire will have fewer periods, so ask for the start date before you call it a mismatch.

4. Net pay shows up in the bank

Ask for bank statements covering the same dates. Each stub's net pay should appear as a deposit on or near the pay date, from an employer with the same name.

When you call to verify employment, do not use the phone number printed on the stub. Look the employer up in the state business registry or an independent directory and call that number.

What to do when a check fails

A failed check is a reason to ask for more. It is not, on its own, a reason to decline. Payroll systems have odd edge cases, and people get bonuses, change jobs and correct errors.

Ask for the bank statements. Ask for a second or third stub. If the deposits support a lower income than the application states, use the lower number.

Figure 3 · The same applicant, before and after verification
Stated on the application
$7,800a month
Income to rent
3.25×
3× ruleRent $2,400
On stated income this applicant clears a three-times-rent rule. On the income the deposits support, the same applicant falls under it. The stub was the only thing that changed.

Keep it consistent

Whatever checks you run, run them on every applicant. The Fair Housing Act protects against discrimination on race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status and disability, and applying a stricter check to some applicants than others is how a screening process gets into trouble.

If a consumer report played any part in a denial, a higher deposit or a co-signer requirement, the Fair Credit Reporting Act requires an adverse action notice. The FTC's guidance for landlords spells out what the notice must say.

State rules vary. California, for example, requires that an income standard for a voucher holder be applied only to the tenant's share of the rent. This post is not legal advice. Check your state and city rules, or ask counsel, before you change your criteria.

Where software fits

These four checks take about five minutes per applicant by hand. A property with 40 applications a month spends more than three hours on them, and the person doing it is checking arithmetic by eye at the end of a long day.

This is the kind of work dailybuilt takes on. It reads the pay stubs and ID when an application arrives, runs the arithmetic, compares stated income with what the documents support, works out rent to income, and sends the file to a leasing manager with every mismatch marked. The manager makes the decision. The software does not approve or decline anyone.

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