The Holy Grail for apartment owners

January 27th, 2007

About five weeks ago, I came across RentBureau, a new company out of Atlanta. These guys are looking to become a fourth credit bureau using rent payments. This is huge for our industry. Why?

For renters:

  • Rent is often your largest expense.
  • You don't get credit for paying rent on time.

For owners:

  • The best predictor of whether someone will pay his rent is if he's paid it before.
  • There's no way to know the above with any certainty.
  • Sure, we call references, but they're easy to fake.

Because of the disconnection here, we rely on credit reports, landlord/tenant court records, reference calls, Magic 8 balls, etc. to predict whether a given applicant will pay his rent bill.

The problem with a credit bureau for landlords is collecting the information with reliable accuracy, and making money doing it. I met the founder of PRBC, which stands for Pay Rent, Build Credit a couple years ago. He had a similar idea, but couldn't get the pricing right to make it cheap enough for resellers like us to incorporate rent-payment data for selling to landlords (assuming PRBC could find it in the first place).

I reached out to Harold Solomon, COO at RentBureau, to see how they intended to make a go of it. Automation is the key, and RentBureau is working on pulling payment data straight from the source -- the software that landlords use to post and track rent payments. Harold says they can pull from any system you use, as long as you're not still tracking rents on index cards.

What responsible resident screening company would not want access to this data? It turns out RentBureau is having trouble getting screening companies motivated to change their ways.

I find this shocking, and we immediately put together a plan to bring RentBureau to our users. Stay tuned!

We've teamed up with SureDeposit

December 19th, 2006

Leave it to Diana Mosher and the folks at Multi-Housing News to spread the word. From this week's MHN Property Management Newsletter:

SureDeposit, a provider of security deposit alternatives, and On-Site.com, a provider of web-based resident screening and lease technology, have entered into a strategic alliance.

At the time of application, the leasing agent is automatically prompted to offer the prospective resident a choice between a traditional security deposit and SureDeposit's lower-cost surety bond. When the SureDeposit option is chosen, an enrollment form, risk-adjusted to leverage On-Site's screening recommendation and pre-filled with the applicant's data, is included with the lease and move-in package.

We've always known that until you have control of your paperwork, it's impossible to have real control of your policies. So now, if our users want to make SureDeposit a priority, we make it simple to implement, and a cinch for brand new leasing agents to get up to speed. Alliance Residential is an early adopter of our combined interface.

NY Times: Only the Strong Survive

November 26th, 2006

The New York Times knocked on our door, asked me our secrets, took my photo and published a lead story in their Real Estate section.

The Times asked: In a strong Manhattan rental market, just how good do your credentials need to be?

The answer: Only the strongest survive.

New York heavyweights weighed in their experience with screening residents, using as many dog references as possible:

Citi Habitats:

"It’s very pro-tenant here in terms of the courts. To evict someone who isn’t paying, it can take six months to go through the right legal process."

Manhattan Skyline Management:

"More information is always helpful, as far as we’re concerned."

Us:

"We have people all the time with a 700 to 800 FICO score, but their landlord-tenant record is horrible. We called the former landlord of a woman who had moved to New York from Georgia. Although her income and credit were excellent, her ex-landlord reported that she had not paid the rent for three months and abandoned her dog when she left."

Anita Ray, who thought her credit was good enough:

"It kind of makes you feel like you’ve done something wrong. You feel like a kicked puppy or something."

Glenwood Management:

"For some reason, when people go into a divorce, if it’s nasty, people stop paying their bills more often than not."

Archstone-Smith:

"You shouldn’t have the same feeling in your stomach as when your dentist tells you that you need a root canal."

Get the full story.

Checking in with Property Grunt

November 26th, 2006

Last year I contacted the New York broker/blogger Property Grunt to clear up some things about what we do.

Today he was kind enough to sing our praises, saying he's happy our company has become a fixture in the real estate world, going so far as:

If you want to get a better idea of what the future will offer for real estate, watch Jake Harrington and On-Site.com very carefully.

I could get used to this!

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