Rent Reporters .... does it help your score???

[Anonymous]

I saw something posted on another thread regarding Rent Reporters (www.rentreporters.com).  Does anyone know how much this helps your score?  Does it report as an installment payment or revolving?  I am on my 3rd lease with my landlord and have perfect rental history.  I have a letter from my landlord attesting to this fact and reflecting that I was 30 days late zero times, 60 days late zero times, etc.   I've hit a bit of a score plateau and am desperately trying to increase my mid score to 620 before applying for a USDA mortgage.  My latest FICO scores (from this site) were TU 653 and EQ 600.

Thanks!!

[ShanetheMortgageMan]

I don't have any first hand experience but I'm pretty sure it reports it as an installment account, and it will help your score if all payments are made on time.  Not sure if it will retroactively report past payment history, but it's worth a shot.

[Anonymous]

Thanks, Shane. I am going to contact them and inquire.  I would love to have my 2.5 years worth of perfect rent payments on my report!

[Anonymous]

I have not used Rent Reporters yet either.  However, i did some more research and found 3 total companies that offer this service.  I have not seen where any property managers offer the ability to report payments to the bureaus.

I found 

www.williampaid.com 

it looks like they charge $5 a month or $60 a year for the service.  It looks like it is geared toward college kids with roommate situations.

www.rentreporters.com

looks like a newer service they charge $89.95 a year or a little more if you want to pay by the month.  

www.rentalkharma.com

looks like they offer rent reporting service as well.  they charge $49.95 a year, when i called them they mentioned the ability to also report the last couple of years of payments as well.  they did say the impact is not as big on your score, but that it does factor in on some more than others.

does anyone know how long it takes for the rent reporting to improve your score?  

thanks

Nancy

[Student_Loans_Kill]

Are they just reporting to experian, which is already the worst of the three, or all three credit reporting agencies ? http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/realestate/mortgages-a-good-rental-history-can-help-borrowers.html...

[Repo-ed]

Man would I love ALLLLLLL my years being reported.  Man. Never once late on a single rent pmt, and I've been renting since 2000.

[Student_Loans_Kill]

It may just give experian more "big brother" data. You would never have an old address deleted from them, IMHO. Also those services are not needed, the renal agency can report on their own, so why pay $89 or $49

[Repo-ed]

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@Student_Loans_Kill wrote:
It may just give experian more "big brother" data. You would never have an old address deleted from them, IMHO. Also those services are not needed, the renal agency can report on their own, so why pay $89 or $49

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You bring up a couple of good points. The one that interest me more are "old addresses".  Are these something you WANT deleted?  Can they be deleted?

[pizzadude]

Even if rental agreements are reported as installment loans on your credit reports, if they are designated as "rental agreement" then they will be excluded from FICO scoring.    It will look good on your CR to have positive payment history, but your FICO score won't be helped.    However I'm fairly sure that some FAKO scores would likely include it.

Here are links to a few recent threads discussing this:

http://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Credit-in-the-News/Experian-to-start-including-rent-history/m-p/8441...

http://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/General-Credit-Topics/Rent-suddenly-reported-as-installment-loan/m-p...

[FrugalRican]

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@Student_Loans_Kill wrote:
It may just give experian more "big brother" data. You would never have an old address deleted from them, IMHO. Also those services are not needed, the renal agency can report on their own, so why pay $89 or $49

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That's assuming you actually are using a rental agency in the first place, which is not always the case.

And that's definitely not an absolute for everyone.