Why Rent Verifications Are Mission Critical

We get asked all the time: “So why are rent verifications so important in the resident screening process? I thought those were a ‘nice-to-have’, not a need?” The way we answer this question is typically the lightbulb moment for most operators.

The short answer TLDR: legacy screening datasets (e.g., FICO / Income / Criminal / Eviction) are great, but they have glaringly large blind spots, especially for Class B and C, workforce housing, and market-rate affordable communities.

The long answer: so what are those large “blind spots” you speak of? Well, consider these 3 non-obvious facts that most folks in the multifamily industry are not taking into consideration today:

1️⃣ FICO: less than 3% of landlords proactively report to the credit bureaus. FICO & Vantage scores "include" rent, but what good is that if landlords don't report it? 🤯

If someone was a good renter or a horrible renter and owes their landlord $9,000, there’s a 97% chance you won’t learn about it in their credit report. Credit card and utilities companies report to the bureaus like clockwork, but landlords do NOT. If a landlord sends a balance owed to a collections agency, it may end up in a credit report 9-12 months later… if you’re lucky.

2️⃣ Eviction Records: Those have us covered, right? Wrong! Did you know that >80% of landlord-tenant disputes are settled OUTSIDE of court, not in it? 🤯

Everyone is familiar with the term “cash for keys”, right? If a resident owes you $6,000, there’s a much greater likelihood you will settle on a handshake agreement to avoid court and pay a portion of that balance and move out by the first of the month. That’s great for the current landlord, but the next one has NO idea that transaction occurred or that remaining balance owed was written off. This doesn’t exist in a database; rent verifications are the only way to detect these.

3️⃣Eviction Records: they are not real-time and, in fact, have a significant timing lag. 🤯

If there is a court-level adjudication in favor of the landlord, county-level databases often take between 3 and up to 120 days to reflect that judgement. By that time, it’s likely already too late. That applicant has already applied and moved into one of your communities. So how do you detect evictions real-time? The only way: timely and diligent rent verifications.

❓So what’s the best predictor for how someone will pay their future rent? Hint: it’s not how they pay their utilities bill or credit card, or how much income they make!

⚡Stop flying blind on the most critical dataset for resident screening. Invest in your rent verification processes, and please don’t hesitate to reach out to Trigo if we can help fully automate and standardize that process for you with AI.