topic Re: Rent Reporters .... does it help your score??? in Mortgage Loans

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

Anonymous — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 10:56:33 GMT

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!!

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

ShanetheMortgageMan — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 15:04:55 GMT

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.

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

Anonymous — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 15:42:33 GMT

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!

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

Anonymous — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 06:00:57 GMT

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

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

Student_Loans_Kill — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 11:42:50 GMT

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?_r=1

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

Repo-ed — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 11:52:51 GMT

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.

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

Student_Loans_Kill — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 12:03:48 GMT

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

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

Repo-ed — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 12:10:12 GMT

@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

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?

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

pizzadude — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 15:06:59 GMT

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/844198/highlight/true#M6778

http://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/General-Credit-Topics/Rent-suddenly-reported-as-installment-loan/m-p/820518/highlight/true#M148192

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

Anonymous — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 15:10:03 GMT

@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

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.

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

dlefkowi — Mon, 03 Mar 2014 14:39:13 GMT

I recently signed up with Rentalkharma.com, paid fee of $29 for two years of service according to the site, the concept seems great and it was overall fairly easily to load my last two years of rental history up. Seemed to run into a snag on verifying the second lease and their website had a few minor technical issues with uploading the docs but after some calls and emails to them we got it figured out. My problem is now when I originally researched this, several news articles including one at the Wall Street Journal and Microsoft money stated it would be reported to Transunion. However now rental Kharma states on their site and I confirmed via email (apparently it was the owner who responded, as I googled who started the site) that they some how "lost" the deal to report to TU and it states on thier site that all rental payment history will be factored into the Fico A expansion score. https://rentalkharma.com/faqs-for-building-consumer-credit/

I am not familair with this score, how does it defer from the regular fico?

I am a little frustrated with the changes of them not at least being able to report to TU but after researcing ( and I run a small business where we have been trying to get set up to report on installment loans for our customers for 8 months!) I understand the 3 CRA can be a little fickle so I am trying to have patiaence while rental kharma is working with the 3 CRAs to be able to report. I think its only a matter of time before one of the 3 CRAs will allow it and fico will recognize it, other wise rentalkharma will become obsolete. For now I am going to wait and see what happens with rental kharma, and simliar options like rentreporters

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

ShanetheMortgageMan — Tue, 04 Mar 2014 06:09:49 GMT

Haven't heard of the FICO Expansion Score. http://myfico.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/226/~/what-is-an-expansion-score-%3F has some details on it though.

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

dlefkowi — Tue, 04 Mar 2014 06:33:28 GMT

Yeah I looked into it (fico expansion)more and its a joke.. only for ppl whit no credit, except no real lenders would or actually do use it..

Decided I'm going to give rental karma a little more time to see if they can produce on their false advertising and actually get any of the 3CRAs reporting. In meantime I have also sent a email to rent reporters asking for clarification on which of the CRA s they report to.

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

Anonymous — Tue, 04 Mar 2014 16:37:34 GMT

These services may be okay, but they appear to have limited affect on your credit score according to what FICO told us. The major credit bureaus tell us they don't use them. Take a look at our report on ConsumerMojo.com: http://wp.me/p2XIOE-1Nx

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

Anonymous — Sun, 23 Mar 2014 19:08:40 GMT

correct answer is it does not. so why did you say it does?

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

Anonymous — Fri, 20 Jun 2014 16:32:36 GMT

Let's be very clear on this topic. It in no way helps your score as of current times. According to rental Kharma (me being a customer) it helps your Fico "expansion score" a score you your self are not able to see on any of your reports. According to Rental Kharma only lenders are able to see this information. How true this is I guess I will have to buy a house to find out. Long story short keep your money in your pocket and keep your canceled checks for your own verification.

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

ShanetheMortgageMan — Fri, 20 Jun 2014 18:54:32 GMT

Recently I helped a client whose rental management company reporting the rent history through EDC (Experian Data Corp.) on Experian only. Listed it as an installment account with the notes of "Residential Rental" underneath it. Found a little more info about it on this .pdf www.becovic.com/CreditReporting101.pdf

Apparently reporting of the rent was part of a feature that came with their software - http://www.appfolio.com/

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

dlefkowi — Fri, 20 Jun 2014 18:59:33 GMT

Well I still have not seen anything from RentalKarma on my TU or anywhere. But I did end up setting up with William Paid to have my rent go thru them and reported to experian. It is now on my experian and I am not sure it is helping my acutal Fico, but i believe it will help with other forms of credit, i.e. like ability to handle a $1200 monthly payments, highest line and payment history. So when I do apply for a mortgage lenders can see pay history there with no questions etc. Figure it can't hurt.