Is a property rental credit check an inquiry?

[masscredit]

I have no experience with this so I'm wondering if a property rental credit check counts as a hard pull inquiry? 

Thanks! 

[Anonymous]

In my case it was.

I added my spouse to my lease and they did a hard inquiry on both of us, despite the fact that I had lived there for two years.

It showed up as "RealPage" on my report, and I had to Google it to figure out what it was. It's a company that handles credit checks solely for real estate companies.

[Anonymous]

Mine showed up as "Kroll Factual Data", business type "mortgage reporters", even though it was a rental. I don't know if the scoring systems can tell that these are not inquiries for lending purposes and whether they are treated the same as an application for a loan or credit card.

[Revelate]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Mine showed up as "Kroll Factual Data", business type "mortgage reporters", even though it was a rental. I don't know if the scoring systems can tell that these are not inquiries for lending purposes and whether they are treated the same as an application for a loan or credit card.

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Depends on the sophistication of the lender's system; there's more codes now for inquiries than there used to be to bring the system more in line with more modern uses of the credit report (i.e. everything under the sun apparently).  

Inquiries aren't a big deal unless you spend them wantonly, and any lender that asks about it on a recon you have a simple and utterly legitimate answer for what it was for... it won't be a problem.

[masscredit]

Interesting! Some property rentals are handled by the owner and some are handled by a management company. I wonder if some of them will look at the possible renter's recent copy of their credit report if they have one.  I've been looking at home rental listings recently and found that some places won't even do a showing or provide the address until after the person has been checked out. That includes a credit check. If it's a hard pull, then a person could rack up a bunch of them before they find a place they like. 

[HiLine]

If I'm not mistaken, this kind of hard inquiries does not affect your FICO score. 

[Anonymous]

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@masscredit wrote:

I have no experience with this so I'm wondering if a property rental credit check counts as a hard pull inquiry? 

Thanks! 

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Mine was a hard pull. I'm pretty sure my property management company only hard-pulled transunion though.