Paylease for reporting rental history?

[Anonymous]

So my new apartment has the option of reporting my rental history through a company called paylease for free. I can pay my rent online and can opt-in to this service. I was wondering if anyone uses them and if so what do they report as? Installmaent loan? That would be amazing since I don't have one reporting as open. And I'm also assuming it will drop my aaoa as well. Advice?

[Anonymous]

FICO versions before FICO 9 do not consider rental tradelines in scoring. It is specifically coded a certain way to show it is essentially a utility account. This service will not help your mortage FICO, auto FICO, or CC FICOs until creditors start moving over to the FICO 9 system.

It should not impact your AAOA from a scoring perspective on any algorithims prior to FICO 9. It's on your report, but not counting towards your score, similar to how AU accounts work on certain scoring models.

[Anonymous]

Adding this - VantageScore DOES include rental payments when reported, but few lenders use this algorithm. FICO is pretty much king. It will look great on your report to future landlords, and possibly in manual underwrite for a mortgage, depending on what you are going for.

[grillandwinemaster]

Interesting information.  I have heard of other scoring companies, other than Fico, that were pushing the "no-debt" credit score driven algorithm.  Companies that would take into account utility bill payments and rent payments into the scoring algorithm.  All in the name of "avoiding" debt products.  I don't think they were very successfull.  So considering what ProGoGetter is saying about Fico 9,  I'm wondering if this new adjustment to Fico 9 was essentially a response to the "no-debt product" movement?  

[grillandwinemaster]

But to answer OP's question, I guess it wouldn't hurt to have that tradeline reported.  As long as you maintain it in good standing.  If it's free, go for it.  Please report back any and all scoring changes to your report.  This would make new and interesting data points.