Rental payment reports to credit bureaus to improve Fico8

[xenon3030]

In some cases it is feasiblle to report the montly rent payments via e.g. www.payyourrent.com to the credit bureaus. I heard that it helps the credit score. I am using it for around half a year but I have not seen a major difference. Here are some notes:

. In EX, the account type is rental agreement.

. In EX, this account shows a balance of monthly rent value at any time. But this balance was not included in the credit debt.

. In TU, this account shows zero balance and it is counted as "other loans" but was not included among the loan accounts (CK report).

Does anyone know the way that the montly rental payment reports can help the credit scores? If I change my apartment and due to no option to pay rents via payyourrent.com further, does payyourrent.com close the account and report it to credit bureaus? In this case, does it hurt credit score?

[Anonymous]

There's a recent thread in a different forum that asks the same question.  I suggest you read it:  People are adding comments to it as recently as today:

http://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/General-Credit-Topics/Adding-Rent-to-a-FICO-9-Score/td-p/5022869

Let's suppose that you get your rental history to appear inside one or more of the big three credit reports (EX, EQ, TU).  You still need your prospective lender or CC issuer to use a scoring model that considers rental history.   Here are the models that do NOT consider it:

FICO 8 (and all its flavors)

All FICO models before FICO 8 (including the ones used for mortgage decisions)

Right there that accounts for almost all credit granting decisions done today (or in the near future).  A tiny number of lenders are using one of the following models, which do include rental history (if it appears in the report):

FICO 9

Vantage

FICO XD

I base all this on these two articles:

https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/finance/credit-report-rent-payments-incorporated/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurengensler/2015/11/20/rent-reporting-credit-score/#1af174c21f6e

[Anonymous]

I was just about to write the same thing, CGID!  Most credit scoring models ignore rent reports.

I only pull credit reports from tenant prospects if they want to bother with it and get a small rent discount -- I generally don't pull credit reports unlike most landlords.  Even if I did pay for a credit report pull, it would likely be FICO08 and disregard rent reports.

Maybe in a few years more banks and lenders will switch to FICO09 but so far not many care for it.

[Anonymous]

Thanks, ABCD!

To our OP: It might be of value to keep your conversation going in that other thread.  And also (as you'll see mentioned a couple times) explore with the FICO community conventional strategies (i.e. loans and credit cards) instead of rent.  The conventional accounts will be considered by all credit scoring models and are also far cheaper than paying people to report your rent.