Contributing rental payment data to Experian RentBureau’s national rental history database can help to improve bad debt recovery, reduce skips and evictions, and most importantly, increase profitability. Additionally, by sharing rental payment data, owners/managers have the opportunity to set their community apart from others by offering residents a unique and impactful amenity of establishing or building their credit history.
Once you share your rental payment data with Experian RentBureau®, that information is immediately available through our resident screening partners. And when other property managers are able to incorporate your data into their screening process, everyone benefits, including you. Sharing rental payment data allows on-site teams to identify prospects who are attempting to skip from a community and can prevent those applicants from getting a new lease until they satisfy their outstanding debt obligation.
Sharing data is easy and automatic
“When we started working with Experian RentBureau, one of the things we found — really the key — was that the process of sharing data was very simple. On the reporting side, we just continue to operate as we normally do — collecting rent, posting payments, processing our daily transactions — not really doing anything different than we would do otherwise. Every night we transfer all the relevant data to Experian RentBureau directly from our system.”
— Chris Jenkins, Vice President of Financial Planning, Equity Residential
Sharing data encourages on time payments
“Once, we even had a resident who applied to move back into the same apartment community he had left with an outstanding balance. Rather than having to rely on the staff to know that he left owing rent, Experian RentBureau’s rental payment history data provided that information immediately. What we have found is that once an applicant realizes this information is available and will affect his ability to move, he tends to honor his obligation and pay his rent timely.”
— Michael Johnson, Executive Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer for ALCO Management, Inc.
Sharing data improves bad-debt recovery
“The way I see it, rental payment history data helps you to decrease your bad debt because you are bringing in more qualified people up front. Better quality residents on the front side reduce the need for collections on the back side. That’s the bottom line.”
— Tracy Levesque, Senior Vice President for GrayCo Properties
“On the collections side, we have a lot of examples where we don’t have to contact former residents, they contact us to clear up an outstanding balance when their rental payment history appears in connection with their trying to rent another apartment. So, it absolutely does work.”
— Chris Jenkins, Vice President of Financial Planning, Equity Residential
“I’ve had residents come back and pay their outstanding rent so they could move into a new community, and I’ve had residents pay an outstanding balance so they could move into our community. We didn’t incur any collection fees to get the outstanding rent.”
— Michael Johnson, Executive Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer for ALCO Management, Inc.
Sharing data provides a competitive advantage
“Rental payment history data also gives us a competitive advantage. We inform our prospective residents that they can improve their credit score by having good rental history with us. They really like that because the majority of our prospects and residents already have good credit. It’s very important to them to maintain that score or even to increase their credit scores.”
— Elizabeth Phillips, Regional Property Manager, HHHunt
Sharing data helps with collecting unpaid debt within your portfolio
“We are confident in not re-renting to our own residents who may owe us a balance, since the rental data is always current. When there is a large balance at another community in which they currently live and they have applied at another community of ours, we know that we need to get that previous rental account cleared up before we can approve the application at the new community. We regularly see applicants who either have lived or still do live at one of our communities, and having the rental payment data allows us to either quickly give credit to good residents or identify the residents that still owe us money.”
— Chris Jenkins, Vice President of Financial Planning, Equity Residential
“In the past, because of the time delay between a resident incurring an unpaid balance and that information appearing on his or her credit report, they could actually move into another community without anyone knowing about the unpaid rent. However, with Experian RentBureau’s data being uploaded daily, I know when the applicant applies if he currently has outstanding rent. I have even had the experience where a resident skipped out of one of our properties and then tried to move into a different community we own. Immediately, we informed him that he would have to pay the outstanding rent, which he did within the hour.”
— Michael Johnson, Executive Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer for ALCO Management, Inc.
Sharing data reduces risk and benefits the entire industry
“By furnishing or sharing AMC’s rental payment history to Experian RentBureau, we are able to ‘share the love’ with the industry as a whole. When owners and managers don’t share data, skips and outstanding debt go into a ‘vortex’ leaving everyone open to financial risk. Sharing of rental payment data is going to benefit all of us — all property management companies. And if we understand that, we participate more and we are better off as an industry. Act now. Do it immediately. Participate immediately. Run, don’t walk. Because the sooner you get this information, the better off you are going to be.”
— Carrie Polonsky, Director of Sales Performance for Advanced Management Company