Screening with Tech

How Yardi can help

By Yardi Blog Staff on Jun 25, 2019 in News

Finding the right residents for a community is a complex, critical part of operating a multifamily community, and it is vital to the long-term success of a property. Looking into a potential resident’s background is not as simple as running a credit check. Effective screening can play a pivotal role in risk mitigation by ensuring leases are only signed with qualified tenants.

Yardi recently partnered with Equifax to enhance ScreeningWorks Pro, the company’s resident screening platform, and enable property managers to quickly verify a prospective renter’s employment and income details. Patrick Hennessey, Yardi’s vice president of resident screening, and Tyler Sawyer, vice president of rental and real estate with Equifax, discuss how tech can lead to more efficient and effective screening processes.

What is the biggest challenge for effectively screening potential residents today?

Sawyer: Data is vital for a landlord or property owner looking to identify the right resident. From a credit-reporting standpoint, we work to alleviate any perceived challenges by ensuring these parties have access to the best data, regardless of whether a potential renter has a robust credit file or is categorized as having thin credit or no credit. Without robust data insight, potentially strong tenant candidates can be left paying higher deposits, needing co-signers or being rejected altogether.

Hennessey: Helping our clients overcome the challenges of effectively screening applicants is our business. Getting that right for both the applicant and the property is critical. A trend we’re seeing is the desire by landlords to make good decisions as quickly as possible—in near real time, if they can. For screening companies, this requires ensuring we can rely on the sources that provide us with consumer data. It means finding reasonable and reliable ways to do our job both effectively and efficiently.

Editor’s note: This post originally appeared on Yardi subsidiary Multi-Housing News. Read the rest of the article here.