All Forum Posts by: Justin Yung

Great suggestion, Michael.

Experian has a site for landlords where they explaining how they can report rental payment history.

http://www.experian.com/rentbureau/rental-reportin...

Sorry, correction to the above post, I meant to say that July 4th fell on a Saturday this year.  Which doesn't change the point that Friday, July 3rd 2015 was a banking day.

Hi Matthew,

You mention that July 3, 2015 was not a banking day.  It actually was a day that the ACH payment network was operating on.  You can find a list of Federal bank holidays on the Federal Reserve's Website here:

http://www.federalreserve.gov/aboutthefed/k8.htm

Since July 4th fell on a Sunday this year, there was no bank holiday for the July 4th payment.

Here's a helpful link to a recent article that shows that rent payment can bolster credit history for tenants:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/where-we-live/wp/2015/03/11/new-move-to-report-rent-payment-history-may-help-first-time-home-buyers/

This week, an article by Kenneth Harney shines a light on this subject.  In my opinion, its one of the better articles written by an unbiased 3rd party observer.

http://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/la-fi-h...

Full disclosure: I work for ClearNow, which is one of 3 companies mentioned in the article and am quoted in the article.

Great discussion.  I'm in Durham, NC with two rental units.  We've got good job and population growth and generally rents have been trending up (though still very affordable) and the area as a whole is gentrifying.  One thing not mentioned is that it appears the supply of rental units is increasing which could dampen future rent growth.  So, I'd put the "ease of building new supply" as something to watch out for, too.

For my rentals, I use MySmartMove.  Its a well-designed product that, as someone else said, has a criminal background check (a must have, in my opinion).  It also used to be less expensive to use MySmartMove through the BiggerPockets site than going to TransUnion directly.

Would you do a tenant screening that just includes credit report, but not criminal background?  Was looking a big 3 credit bureau that offers this (credit check but no criminal background).

It might be easier to get tenants to accept online rent payment if there is more in it for them.