Section 8 Process · 2026-08-21
A voucher tenant is ready and you have agreed on the unit, and now you are staring at a form called an RFTA. This one packet decides how fast, or how slowly, your Section 8 tenancy starts and your first payment lands. Here is how to get it right on the first pass.
RFTA stands for Request for Tenancy Approval. It is the packet a landlord and a voucher holder submit together to the housing authority to formally start a Section 8 tenancy. Until the RFTA is in the housing authority's hands, nothing moves: no inspection is scheduled, no rent is approved, no contract exists. It is the starting gun for the entire process.
Think of it as the housing authority's intake form for your specific unit and tenant. It tells them the address, the bedroom size, the rent you are proposing, who pays which utilities, and who you are as the owner. Everything the authority does next flows from what you put on this packet.
A complete RFTA submission usually includes the RFTA form itself, your proposed lease, proof that you own the property, a W-9 and direct-deposit authorization so the housing authority can pay you, a lead-paint disclosure or certification, and the unit's specifics: proposed rent, security deposit, and the split of utility responsibility between owner and tenant.
The entire trick is completeness. A packet missing the W-9, the ownership proof, or the lead certification does not get worked on and set aside politely; it stalls until you supply the missing piece, and you go to the back of the line when you do. Submitting it right the first time is worth days or weeks.
Two things happen next. First, rent reasonableness: the housing authority compares your proposed rent to comparable unassisted units in the area and to its payment standards. If your number is above what the market and the standards support, they will ask you to lower it, and the tenancy cannot proceed at the original figure. Pricing to the reasonable range up front avoids a negotiation that costs a week.
Second, the HQS inspection. The unit must pass a Housing Quality Standards inspection before the lease and the Housing Assistance Payments contract can execute, and before you see a dime. We keep a full HQS checklist in a separate post, because a failed first inspection over small, fixable items is the most common avoidable delay in the whole process.
The delays are predictable, which means they are preventable: an incomplete packet, a proposed rent above reasonableness, a failed first HQS inspection over items you could have fixed in an afternoon, a missing lead certification, or a muddled utility allocation. Any one of these can add weeks between a ready tenant and your first payment.
Our approach is boring on purpose. We fill the RFTA out complete, price the rent inside the reasonableness range from the start, and walk the unit against the HQS checklist before the authority's inspector ever arrives, so it passes the first time. That is the difference between a voucher tenancy that starts this month and one that drags into next.
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We handle the RFTA, the rent-reasonableness pricing, and the HQS pre-inspection across six South Jersey counties, so the tenancy starts fast and the check lands on time. Bring us the unit and the tenant.
Or use the form on our For Owners page.