The Real Estate Deal
Editor Cindy Zetts dishes on real-estate and development around Puget Sound: She lived in apartments, townhomes and houses -- a dozen of them in four states -- before settling in the Seattle area in 1997. After taking a bath on the sale of her first home, in South Florida, she vowed to wise up about real estate. She bought a house in Covington 10 years ago because, well, she could afford one there.
SubscribeJune 26, 2008 3:00 PM
Real-estate landlords: Find out how well prospective tenants might pay rent
Posted by Cindy Zetts
This morning a company called RentBureau introduced a service for landlords large and small that the company says will predict whether prospective tenants will pay their rent.
RentPredict.com uses rental-payment histories and other data to produce scores for about 80 percent of Americans, even if they don't rent. Scores range from 1 to 999.
Atlanta-based RentBureau is kind of like a credit bureau for landlords. It runs the National Rental Data Exchange database that tracks residents' rental histories and collects rental-payment information every 24 hours from properties across the country. The data is updated daily and is available to RentBureau members as soon as it hits the company's system.
RentPredict.com -- introduced today at the National Apartment Association Conference and Exposition in balmy Orlando, Fla. (Does anyone actually attend conferences in Orlando? The pool is always calling.) -- is the company's newest tool. It was designed to offer owners of small- and mid-sized properties -- 70 percent of landlords, the company says -- a way evaluate potentially risky residents and avoid losses from tenants who skip out on their rent.
"Credit scores have always been combined with other information to report a person's financial history," Eric Hartz, CEO of RentBureau, said in a news release. "RentPredict.com is the first score to use detailed rental history and other data to forecast how likely that potential resident is to pay the rent."
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