In this week’s episode, Podcast Host, Property Manager & Business Owner, Andrew Schultz, chats with Katie Brosch of RentPrep about tenant credit reports.
In this specific episode, Katie teaches us how to read a tenant’s credit report from beginning to end. If you’re a landlord who has ever felt lost when reading a credit report, this podcast is for you.
To learn more about tenant credit reports, including how to read them, listen below!
Andrew Schultz (00:00:03):
Hi everyone. Andrew Schultz here with rent prep.com. I am the community manager. I’m also a licensed real estate broker here in the state of New York with over 14 years of experience in the property management and rental property industries. We have an exciting AMA session for you. If you haven’t tuned into one of these before, this is our April ask me anything session, and I actually have a couple of guests with me today that we’re gonna pop up on screen here. We have both Josh and Katie from Rent Prep. Josh is the marketing manager and Katie is the rent prep screening and compliance manager, I think she said. And we’re going to go through and talk about a whole bunch of different tenant screening related issues and things of that nature. Today. We have Josh with us. Josh is gonna help moderate the discussion today. Josh is part of the marketing team. He’s been working with Rent prep for quite a while now. Josh and I actually talk on a pretty regular basis. Anything that comes down the pipeline that’s podcast or video or AMA related. Josh has had his hands on it at some point. I would,
Katie Brosch (00:01:01):
I would say, I would say we’re, I’m doing great Andrew. I would say we’re, we’re pretty good buddies at this point. I think we work, it’s been about a, it’s been about a year and a half that we’ve been, we’ve been kind of working together, so you know, we’ve better, better every week. No, no, no. I did that. Some
Andrew Schultz (00:01:17):
Water all over the floor next to me. Oh my God. Yeah, so Josh and I have been working together for, yeah, has it been about a year and a half already?
Katie Brosch (00:01:25):
I think it’s been a year and a half. You know, we meet, we meet every other week and then we’re talking all throughout the, the week on Slack. So a lot of communication between us, which, which you know, makes, makes the marketing department here at rent prep that much, that much better.
Andrew Schultz (00:01:41):
Yeah, absolutely. We also have Katie from the screening compliance department. Katie has been at rent prep for a few years now at least. Cause I know I’ve talked to you several times when I call in. And the nice thing is when you call the screening department at Rent prep and try to speak to a live human, Katie is one of those live humans that actually picks up the phone and takes your phone call and kind of walks you through whatever questions you might have. Katie, tell us a little bit more about how long you’ve been at Rent prep, what you do there, things like that.
Speaker 3 (00:02:07):
Yeah, so I’ve been at Rent prep almost four years now. It’ll be four years this summer. And I started as a screener then I was a senior screener and just recently moved to more of a compliance role. So still related to screening. So you might not get me on the phone when you call in, but you will definitely get a hum. Still
Andrew Schultz (00:02:24):
<Laugh>. Well, there you go. All right, cool. Sweet. and we’re excited to have Katie on today because she’s actually gonna walk us through a credit report and kind of answer some of the most commonly asked questions that landlords have when they run a credit report. And what am I looking at? How do I read this? Things of that nature. We’re gonna jump into that in, in just a couple minutes here. But I think we’ll start off with a quick question. Let me jump screens here. I never even popped up the welcome to Rent Prep April. Oh, I’m really slacking today. My apologies. My apologies.
Katie Brosch (00:02:55):
<Laugh>, you’re, you’re rusty.
Andrew Schultz (00:02:56):
I am. We’re rusty. You only do these like once a month. I’m not a, we’re not, plus we’re getting used to the software still.
Katie Brosch (00:03:02):
You gotta get you, we really like
Andrew Schultz (00:03:03):
The software. Yeah, exactly. All right, well we’ll jump to our first question of the day, which is from Kai. I own a duplex in Pennsylvania with a less than desirable basement. I’m thinking of putting an access code lock on the door and not giving tenants access to the basement since it wouldn’t serve the tenant in any way. Then they would still have access in the event of an emergency. What are your thoughts on restricting basement access in a duplex that is side by side? I guess I’ll take this one. I probably have the most experience in this one. And I just realized that Josh, we were supposed to be answering or asking the questions, <laugh>, and I just grabbed that one first off.
Katie Brosch (00:03:40):
That’s okay. I, I think this one definitely falls more into your wheelhouse cuz I’m kind of scratching my head a little bit here with this one.
Andrew Schultz (00:03:47):
So I’m not sure what the laws are in Pennsylvania, but I can tell you that in New York state, if you have utility access in the basement, so if there’s a hot water tank, a furnace, an electric panel, something that someone would need access to as part of their day-to-day living, like, especially an access to like an electric panel for a trip breaker, that the tenant would have to have access to that basement. In the event that they don’t need to have access to it. Like there’s no sh no utilities or anything down there that they would need to have access to. Yeah, you can restrict access to it at that point, but honestly, like, I’m not sure in Pennsylvania, but here in Buffalo we have basements and more often than not the basement’s the first thing that’s gonna flood. So I would rather the tenant have access to it so they can tell me about a flood situation prior to it really being a, becoming a bigger deal.
Katie Brosch (00:04:38):
Do you think they’re just worried, do you think Kai is just worried about damage being caused to the basement or the basement being used in a way that, you know, if somebody was having guests over and it got damaged or, you know, destroyed, he’s worried about the actual utilities maybe down there getting damaged?
Andrew Schultz (00:04:55):
I mean, maybe we have some pretty gross basements in our, in some of our buildings too. I mean, most of our properties were built in the 1890 to like 19, let’s call it 1950s timeframe. So it’s not poured concrete basements, it’s not new built construction. More often than not it’s Stack Stone Foundation or some of our places are actually just on, on piers. Like they don’t have even a, a crawl or, well, they have a crawl space, but not like a full basement. So for something like that, I guess, you know, I wouldn’t want tenants in a basement causing damages or, or anything like that. But yeah, I don’t know. I don’t think that, I mean, short of there being like legitimate hazards in the basement, I don’t think that I would restrict the access. And if there are legitimate hazards, that’s probably something that you should be working on correcting rather than covering
Katie Brosch (00:05:40):
<Laugh>. Yeah, exactly. Just, just putting a lock on the door, <laugh>
Andrew Schultz (00:05:43):
Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. So I guess I would say for something like that, check your state law. See what the register, excuse me, see what the, the laws are in your state because it definitely, here in New York, there are laws about that and it’s probably for situations exactly like this where, you know, know a tenant can’t get to their hot water tank and relay the hot water, the pilot or something. The landlord doesn’t respond for two weeks. That tenant’s sitting there without any access to, to hot water. So
Katie Brosch (00:06:07):
Yeah, for sure. Cool. all right, we wanna, do we wanna jump into another question or do we wanna, you think now would be a good time to have, have Katie review the, the credit report?
Andrew Schultz (00:06:25):
Katie, what do you think? You wanna jump into the credit report?
Speaker 3 (00:06:28):
I’m ready.
Andrew Schultz (00:06:29):
All right, let me jump over here.
Katie Brosch (00:06:30):
Katie is ready.
Andrew Schultz (00:06:32):
We’ll get this pulled up on screen. There we go.
Speaker 3 (00:06:39):
Okay. So my little disclaimer is that this is not a real person’s report that we’re reviewing. It’s TransUnion’s test subject information. And as we get to the bottom, you’ll see he’s over a hundred years old, so <laugh>. So at I’m just gonna like go over like the basics of it and then I’ll spend more time on the the, oh my gosh. Those spots that landlords tend to have the most questions are like kind of wording gets weird and like what exactly that means. So at the top of the report it starts with the individual’s personal information. This is William b Thorn. And then as you scroll it’ll just give, it’ll give up to three addresses current and then previous addresses shows employment which is not verified in any way by TransUnion. It’s just the last employer that was provided to TransUnion. Which is why we have our own income verification to verify that separately. Cause that’s just what TransUnion has on their record. Last I lost it on screen. Okay, there we go.
Andrew Schultz (00:07:51):
I think we got your back. Okay. Yeah,
Katie Brosch (00:07:53):
I think we had some technical issues there. Sorry,
Speaker 3 (00:07:56):
<Laugh>. We’re good. Okay. So the profile summary is just a synopsis of what you’ll see on the rest of the report. So this person has a total of 13 trade line accounts which is revolving installments or open seven collections, one public record, which is a bankruptcy. And then inquiries is the third party’s heart inquiries. The derogatory item section, you have negative trade lines and then the trade lines with any historical negatives and then occurrence of any historical negatives. These terms are common questions cuz they kind of are not straightforward. So negative trade lines are accounts which are currently delinquent or derogatory and they’re considered like credit harming behaviors. And then the trade lines with historical negatives are, excuse me, the number of accounts that have never have ever been delinquent or derogatory but have been paid in full and are now current.
Speaker 3 (00:08:50):
Whereas the occurrence of any historical negatives is the total count of all delinquency occurrences that are currently appearing on the report. So historical is any and all and then the occurrence of any historical is the ones that are currently still delinquent. And then right below, right below that is just the trade line summary. So it shows all your accounts again and then it just adds the columns for the high credit which is the most that they’ve ever like owed on the account. If it was a loan, it would be for that loan amount. Credit limit on a revolving is your limit that you can’t spend past, current balance, past due balance what your payment is. And then we’ll break that down further down the report. Okay, so if you scroll to the resident score, this one will show always the resident score and then off to the side we’ll give you the score factors. So the score factors are just explaining reasons why that person doesn’t have a perfect eight 50.
Katie Brosch (00:09:48):
And then Katie, Katie really quick, what, what is the difference between a a resident score and just a a credit score in just in general?
Speaker 3 (00:10:00):
Yeah, so the resident score is not a FICO score. It was a score that was specifically created by TransUnion but it was more based on how an individual would be as a renter as opposed to someone who’s like applying for a loan to like repay that loan. So they actually, TransUnion analyzed 2.9 million residents with payment history taken into account and they identified key pieces on a credit report of credit data that would lead to an eviction. And that’s how they created their formula for what a resident score would look like for in the rental industry. So they used a 12 month lease term looking to uncover instances of evictions using reports that had like three more late payments and insufficient funds and that’s how they came up with their formula. There’s also a really good blog post on our website if you just search resident score it breaks it down as to like what their like low accept conditional is and everything like that.
Speaker 3 (00:10:55):
But their scores tend to be lower than what you would expect to see on a FICO score. So TransUnion considers anywhere from a 5 24 to a 5 59 as a conditional slash low accept and then 5 38 to eight 50 as low accept and accept. Which is lower than what you would typically I feel like people expect of a FCO score. And then there’s different risk factors that they took into account for that. So I just recommend reading our blog posts that has a lot more information on that too cuz I could talk for hours about resident score
Katie Brosch (00:11:25):
<Laugh>.
Speaker 3 (00:11:27):
Alright. So under that it’ll break down each individual trade line. So it’s just giving a summary again of like your total count and then what the total balance is currently. So this guy only owes $250 currently he has a total credit limit on his revolving accounts of 2,300. And just really quick revolving would be like a credit card cuz your monthly payment can change based on how much is being put on the card. Installment is a loan and then open sounds like it’s just an open account but it’s actually referring to an account that would be something like utilities. And we don’t see those too often but sometimes they appear on the credit reports.
Katie Brosch (00:12:06):
Gotcha.
Speaker 3 (00:12:07):
Sorry, shimming through my notes here.
Speaker 3 (00:12:11):
Okay, so his he has 13 of ’em, so I’m just gonna review the first one to show key points. So it looks like it’s River Edge investments and it’s a car loan or automobile loan. For account type it shows individual account. Sometimes there you’ll see like it’s a joint contractual liability meeting. They’re not the only one responsible for the account on there or it’ll show that they’re an authorized user on the account. So someone else is responsible for the payments but they’re authorized to use that account. Status is if it, they’re currently paying as agreed if they’re delinquent if or that’s about it there. And then remarks is this account is currently closed. That would be another section where it would show if it was like still open or if it was in a delinquent or collection status.
Speaker 3 (00:12:58):
And then it towards the middle there it gives you your open, closed and verified dates. So obviously open is when the account was open, closes when they closed the account or if it was a closed by the credit grantor. And then verified is the date that it was last verified as belonging to that individual. Typically that would be like the most recent activity on the account and then your balance past due credit limit and payment amount. So balance would be the current balance past due, if there’s anything past due credit limit is their total amount that they can’t go beyond. If you see NA like they’re on this account, it’s cuz it’s already closed so there’s nothing to report. And then his payment amount was 298 is what he was responsible for monthly.
Katie Brosch (00:13:38):
Got it.
Speaker 3 (00:13:39):
And then the colored circles down there just show the payment history. It’ll show up to 48 months of credit history and then green obviously is made on time, no problems. And then the different shades of yellow orange into the darker red are just 30, 60, 90 or 120 days late. And then if you see na in like some of the boxes like that, it could be because data wasn’t reported that month or if it was in some kind of like deferment status or they didn’t have to make a payment that month. That’s how it gets reported.
Katie Brosch (00:14:08):
Nice.
Speaker 3 (00:14:09):
So that’s kind of just, I talk really fast too, so I’m sorry <laugh> if
Katie Brosch (00:14:12):
I No, you’re, you’re doing good.
Speaker 3 (00:14:15):
So the rest of his accounts he just had some other credit cards. Same information. It looks like on this instant his card was lost or stolen and that’s the reason for like why it was closed. So you’ll see information like that on there. And then the payment history
Andrew Schultz (00:14:32):
I’m looking to see, I don’t know if this report has one, but I’m curious, is there anything that actually has a 30 day, doesn’t look like he has anything that’s currently 30 days past due? But that would be
Speaker 3 (00:14:43):
Just the old
Andrew Schultz (00:14:44):
Change the status essentially, right? Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. So the status note would change if there’s something that’s currently 30 days past due,
Speaker 3 (00:14:50):
Correct? Yeah, so it would show, sometimes it shows why, like if there was a deferment of some kind or it would just sometimes it’ll just say like Mr. Late payment.
Andrew Schultz (00:14:59):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (00:14:59):
But there is not always a reason. Sometimes we do not know at all. <Laugh>. And then this person also had sorry, you can keep scrolling down. Scroll. Okay. Yeah. So, oh, if you can you stop right there. Sorry,
Andrew Schultz (00:15:14):
Where do you want me?
Speaker 3 (00:15:15):
That’s fine. Right there is fine. All of these ones. So when we go to the bottom of the report, we’ll see that this individual had a bankruptcy, which is read as a public record. So these accounts on here under remarks it says chapter seven bankruptcy and that’s because all of these ones at the bottom directed by his chapter seven bankruptcy. And we’ll get more details on the bankruptcy further down the report. Alright, so I hit all those so you can keep going. Okay. And then he does have some accounts in collections. Sorry, I tripped myself up here.
Speaker 3 (00:15:52):
Okay. So collection accounts when they stop paying on their accounts that creditors can sell them to either a debt collector or collection agency. And all of these remarks will just show placed for collection. Sometimes you’ll see that there was like a payment plan set up so they’re actively paying on them. But if there’s a pass due amount of like na, it’s typically because they’re either just paying as is or there’s no payment plan currently set up. And typically you can tell the difference because the current and the original balance will remain the same. So like in this instance they’re both 723 and there’s been no activity on it. So this one is medical. That’s probably what we see the most of in collections is medical accounts. Sometimes you’ll see like utilities or like their phone bill. You’ll see like Verizon is trying to still collect their money on that. So that’s just kind of the activity that you’ll see there.
Speaker 4 (00:16:49):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (00:16:49):
And then right below that should be the bankruptcy.
Speaker 3 (00:16:57):
Oh, inquiries and then inquiries ma’am. Okay. So inquiries, it just breaks it down to the individual inquiries. So it’ll tell you the company that pulled it and then like what kind of business they were in. So we had like a bank, personal finance loans, and then real estate. This is an older report, but tenant screening is now a soft pull so it will not impact the individual’s credit score and it will not show as an inquiry on the report. That’s important for our TransUnion full credit report. And then our, also our other credit option that we offer too.
Andrew Schultz (00:17:25):
I just learned that actually cuz I used to look at the inquiries to see if they were looking at other, like if there were other property managers, other landlords that were pulling credit reports on ’em, you could actually see on the reports, oh this person’s been out shopping for apartments for two or three months or whatever, and you could kind of see where they’ve been and it kind of leads you to wonder, okay, what happened? Why didn’t they get any of these other places? But oh wow. That’s a soft pole now, huh?
Speaker 5 (00:17:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (00:17:48):
Yeah. That changed, I wanna say almost two years ago now. Cuz it, it used to be a hard pull for our credit decision report, but TransUnion was soft so you won’t see it on the credit report report and won’t affect it. Anything.
Andrew Schultz (00:18:10):
Katie, you, you broke up there for a second. Did you say that you won’t see the soft poles?
Katie Brosch (00:18:17):
Oh sorry,
Andrew Schultz (00:18:20):
I think we lost her.
Katie Brosch (00:18:23):
Mm, there we go. She might be back.
Andrew Schultz (00:18:26):
She might be back.
Speaker 3 (00:18:27):
Okay. I think, I’m sorry.
Andrew Schultz (00:18:29):
Okay, perfect. You’re back. Were you saying that the soft pulls don’t show up at all? Yeah, we can hear you. Can you hear us
Katie Brosch (00:18:36):
<Laugh>?
Speaker 3 (00:18:38):
Yes. <laugh>, yes. Correct. For the soft pulls. So like if an individual, like if you were to go into like TransUnion and pull your own credit or like something like that, you would see your own soft inquiries. But if a third party’s pulling your report, they’ll never see your soft inquiries. Cuz they don’t affect your credit score so they’re not gonna show up on the report. And then those fall off after two years.
Speaker 5 (00:19:02):
Nice.
Speaker 3 (00:19:05):
Okay. I keep breaking up and I’m just gonna keep talking.
Andrew Schultz (00:19:10):
I think you’re okay.
Katie Brosch (00:19:11):
Yeah, we’ll, we’ll let you know if we’ll let you know if you go Okay. Go crazy.
Speaker 3 (00:19:17):
Okay, cool. Alright. So he has a bankruptcy chapter seven, which is known as like liquidation. So they can sell some or all of their property to pay off debts. And it focuses on more discharging like their unsecured debts, like their credit cards, personal loans, medical bills. Whereas chapter 13 is more of like a reorganization of debt so they can keep their property and then they go on to like a payment plan that’s typically three to five years and it’s court mandated and as long as they complete their payments within those years, they can keep their property. So William Thorn, hey had chapter seven bankruptcy and it was discharged, which means that it successfully went through and he was able to go through with that chapter seven bankruptcy and we saw that reflected in some of his trade line accounts. The ones that were closed and affected by his chapter seven bankruptcy. Well, you’ll see that in the remarks section. If a bankruptcy was dismissed it means that it was not granted. So they were not able to go through with the bankruptcy to like either liquidate or reorganize their debts. So those are the two statuses you’ll see for bankruptcies.
Andrew Schultz (00:20:19):
So the first one was discharged and the second one was dismissed?
Speaker 3 (00:20:23):
Yes. Yes. So discharged as it was successful and they were able to either liquidate or be organized and then dismissed as if they were not successful. So they were not able to do anything with their debts.
Andrew Schultz (00:20:34):
Okay, gotcha. What if somebody has an eviction? Sorry, not an eviction. What if someone has a bankruptcy case that’s open but hasn’t been, hasn’t been completed by the court system? Is there like a different status for that?
Speaker 3 (00:20:46):
Sometimes it’ll just say open or pending.
Andrew Schultz (00:20:49):
Gotcha.
Speaker 3 (00:20:52):
But the open can also mean that like typically it’s discharged and open. You, you can see both if they’re doing the repayment plan one if they’re still within the window of where they have to pay.
Andrew Schultz (00:21:03):
Okay. That makes sense.
Speaker 3 (00:21:05):
Yeah. Alright, so right below that is the criminal section. So the TransUnion full credit report also has the nationwide criminal and sex offender search. And it’s automated. This one was in Utah. So at the top it just shows his personal information. He’s 102 years old and it shows his address. And then like his physical features or descriptions. And then below that you get more of a detailed record. If I remember correctly, he had armed robbery from a jet ski. Yeah. Armed robbery from a jet ski <laugh> in 2018, which is so sorry, lemme start at the top. I kind of read them differently from a screening perspective, but so this was Utah, a O C in 2018. It happened in Kane County and then at the very top it shows you the, the case number, which in this case is saying fake case number, but it gives you that case number and where it was in the county.
Speaker 3 (00:22:01):
That way if you ever needed to like get more information on your own, you could always like look at that county court and see if they’ll help you too to kind of get more information if needed. So this one, what happened in 2018? Armed robbery from a jet ski? The charge degree, it was a class A felony and then it’s saying that it’s closed. So it’s like done and over with because he was actually convicted. The only thing I don’t think it’s showing us is what his sentencing was which is not uncommon for that to be missing. Sometimes it’s just not reported which is just how the court reports the records. So again, you could always call like on your own if you need to actually there. And it says that at the bottom it’s just like complete of the wrap sheet and that’s it. If you had any more it would like, you’d get another break line and then it would show the next case. Sometimes you’ll see the actual cases like this one or it might just be a D O C record letting you know that they were in, in the Department of Corrections. Typically it’ll tell you what for.
Katie Brosch (00:23:07):
Got it.
Speaker 3 (00:23:08):
Okay. And then the last section of the report will be the eviction search and I believe he had one as well that we can look at. So again, record summary gives you his name and address. The important part here, sorry, if you can just scroll up a little. Yep. Off to the right hand side it says number of proceedings available. So if that was zero, that would mean that there was no evictions filed. That’s a con common question cuz it is worded a little weird. So number of proceedings available has the one above it. So we as one eviction record, which could just be a filing or it could be a completed eviction. And then if you scroll down it gives you the details. Okay. So this one, it looks like he was actually, sorry, I’m jumping ahead. Sorry.
Speaker 3 (00:23:48):
<Laugh>. So you have the file number at the top, which is the court case number, the address where the state was. And then this was in Cleveland Heights municipal court. So this also happened in 2018 it was filed in November. And then action type is the disposition of the case. So what, what ha what the outcome was in this case, it became a civil judgment. The plaintiff was Silent Creek L L c and then the judgment was granted for $3,419. So he was removed from that property and he needed to pay that back, whether that be past due rent or damages. A common question peop landlords ask us is why a person was evicted. And on the information that we received from the courts, even on our rent prep background check, we can’t see why. We just see what happened with the case, whether it was like a entry and detainer or if it was dismissed because they paid it back or they paid back their past two rent, we never know why. So that’s a conversation you can possibly have with the applicant. Or if you do any kind of like landlord references or anything like that, they might give you more information there.
Andrew Schultz (00:24:53):
Yeah, so here in New York, obviously we can’t really look at eviction data anyway, but there’s essentially two different types of evictions here. There’s the non-payment and then there’s the holdover. Essentially you’re just terminating the tenancy. Would you be able to see like what type of eviction case non-payment versus holdover or could you not see anything like that?
Speaker 3 (00:25:12):
Sometimes again, that depends on like how the records come to us from the courts and how like what, how they report the records mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. So on this record for example, it tells you the filing type which, so this was filed as a judgment, so it probably started as something else and then the judgment got filed, which is why it’s showing as just a judgment filing mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. But typically like in the filing type, you might be able to tell why. Because it, you’ll see like the forcible entry and detainer. Sometimes you will see non-payment, you’ll see holdover I’m trying to think of like other common ones. Or you’ll see the judgment. Those are probably the most common ones we see because we see the last activity that happened. And then civil new filings too is the case status. So that just means it was filed and but it doesn’t mean that they were actually evicted. I don’t know if that helps.
Andrew Schultz (00:26:05):
Okay. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (00:26:09):
Okay. So I think that was it on the eviction. Oh wait, I’m sorry. On the eviction too, for this one specifically there was a released date on there and if you see a release date, that means it was paid. So on that date he paid that judgment amount and so he’s down to $0 and he still has it on his record, but it is paid off, so that’s just important too.
Andrew Schultz (00:26:31):
Okay.
Katie Brosch (00:26:33):
Alright.
Speaker 3 (00:26:33):
That’s all I got.
Katie Brosch (00:26:34):
Cool. That was, that was awesome. It, it’s always nice when we can bring someone who’s, who’s a true subject expert in, in the area. There’s obviously only so much so much I can, I can kind of review as far as the technical stuff. And when you have somebody like, like Katie jumping on, that’s, that’s always, it’s always a plus and adds value for, for our listeners.
Andrew Schultz (00:27:00):
Yeah. There’s just a ton of information that you can pull off of one of these credit and background checks. Yeah. And if you don’t know how to read, how to interpret whatever the case may be, you could easily look over a piece of information that was staring you right in the face and you just completely missed it because you didn’t know what you were looking at. So it’s, it’s nice to be able to sit and go through a full screening report and actually understand what data is presented, what is given to you, like what would warrant more investigation, things of that nature. So that was really detailed and really well done. Thank you so much, Katie. Yeah.
Katie Brosch (00:27:31):
Yeah, that was perfect. All right. Should we should we push forward here? Let’s, let’s hit him with another question here.
Andrew Schultz (00:27:46):
So I have news <laugh>. Yeah. What
Katie Brosch (00:27:52):
Is your news
Andrew Schultz (00:27:53):
<Laugh>? We are recording, but I realize that we haven’t been live on Facebook for the first half hour of the Ama <laugh>.
Katie Brosch (00:28:02):
That’s okay. So
Andrew Schultz (00:28:03):
We are, we are now live on Facebook, but the the entire broadcast for anybody who tunes in kind of halfway through here will be available as a, as a video after the fact and also as a episode of the podcast coming up as well. So, yeah. Yeah, that’s definitely a little bit of an oops on my end for those who actually, you know what, hang on one second cuz I see that we have some people that are actually joining here. Welcome to the rep prep, April Ama my apologies, hit
Katie Brosch (00:28:29):
Him
Andrew Schultz (00:28:30):
Who is joining <laugh>,
Katie Brosch (00:28:32):
Hit him with the welcome as we’re, as we’re halfway through, as
Andrew Schultz (00:28:34):
We’re halfway through. And so welcome to everybody, I’ll, to everyone who’s just joining. But Katie actually just finished going through the credit report portion of it. I have a feeling that a lot of people were probably tuning in for that specifically. Again, I apologize that falls back on me, but we will have the recording of this up available immediately on the Facebook page, and then it’ll also go up on our YouTube page both as a, a video and then as a podcast episode. So the information will be available after this if you were waiting specifically for the credit report portion of it. And again, sorry about that. Yeah.
Katie Brosch (00:29:08):
Yeah. And Andrew, I think just from the marketing department, I think our plan was to take that segment anyway and, and split it up into a separate smaller video so that, you know, anybody looking for a quick walkthrough walkthrough video of the credit report can just have Katie’s expertise Right, right beside them in a, in a smaller snippet. So you will, you missed it, but you didn’t miss it. We will, we will get you
Andrew Schultz (00:29:32):
Miss it, but it’s coming back around, I promise. <Laugh>
Katie Brosch (00:29:35):
Yeah. It’s coming back. But well, let’s, let’s push forward with the, with the rest of the program here. Sure. What have you got for questions?
Andrew Schultz (00:29:47):
Which one do you want me to pull up, Josh?
Katie Brosch (00:29:49):
Oh I mean you can just roll ’em, whatever, whatever order they go in. I’ll, I’ll I’ll just go. All right, we got a question from Kim. Kim is asking, how do you verify income such as social security pension and annuity? Katie, that
Andrew Schultz (00:30:11):
Sounds like an excellent opportunity for Katie to talk about Katie. Income verification.
Katie Brosch (00:30:16):
I wanna,
Speaker 3 (00:30:18):
I like didn’t wanna talk over anybody yet. I don’t know. You’re good.
Andrew Schultz (00:30:21):
Operate in there.
Speaker 3 (00:30:23):
So with Social security pensions and annuity we do have our income verification product that you can add on to both of our packages. And the individual has to have online banking set up. They get a link, they get it in their email and through text message and they can just go in and connect as many bank accounts as they need to. And it only pulls their deposit information. So instead of collecting like pay stubs, that could be fake or fake documents <laugh>, you can get like exactly what is being deposited into their bank account. Typically especially the larger banks that will pull up to a year’s worth of data. So you can kind of see what’s being deposited over time. So it’s not just like the last pay stub, which shows two weeks or something like that.
Speaker 3 (00:31:08):
And on that report they can connect as many accounts as they need to whether it’s their own account or if they have like a joint account with somebody. It could be checking savings. If you have really any, any kind of account that you have, as long as you have the online banking set up you can show that and it shows stuff as little as like your Venmo cash outs to your weekly paycheck deposits or if they’re collecting Social security monthly or anything like that. So that highlights all of that.
Katie Brosch (00:31:35):
I think the Venmo cash outs is, is an interesting one too, just with the rise of, of so many different, so many different jobs and so many different income, income areas that people are getting paid through Venmo. Yeah, I I feel like this just wasn’t a thing. This has never been a thing as of like, you know, a couple years ago is really when it started to take off. So I know I do a lot of my, a lot of my stuff through Venmo. So that’s, that’s definitely helpful.
Andrew Schultz (00:32:04):
Yeah. Well, and it’s nice because that income verification product also pulls like DoorDash, Uber listing, all that stuff down, which there’s really no way to verify that income. Like it’s a terrible set up setup that they have where these people who are out basically driving had even pulled out a basic statement sometimes as to what their income expenses are and they’re not gonna have the expenses anyway, but the income that they’re, that they’re earning is, and it makes it very, very difficult. So having that, that income verification product can be incredibly useful for in situations like that.
Katie Brosch (00:32:34):
Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> for sure. Okay. What do we got next? We got another question from Kai. I’ve heard of many landlords giving 11 pages for their rental apps. What additional information besides the standard questions should be included to narrow down the pool for better future tenants?
Andrew Schultz (00:32:57):
So our rental application, the paper version of it, I think is two pages. We’re using a fully digital application process now, but it’s the same, it’s the same form that Rent Prep uses. I, I literally use the same form that Rent Prep uses with a couple of modifications made to it in order to kind of work for our digital side. And it works really, really well for us from that perspective. I haven’t done a paper application in a long time. We’ve been doing digital for
Andrew Schultz (00:33:27):
Two or three years now. I wanna say, I don’t remember exactly how long that we’ve been doing the the digital side of things, but one thing that we do is we do require all of our applicants to sign off on the selection criteria prior to getting to the application stage so that they can’t say, well I didn’t know that I wasn’t gonna be approved. Well, you had every opportunity to read the selection criteria prior to actually being or actually putting in your application. And it’s up to you whether you choose to read through that or if you want to just click the okay button and kind of move on to the next thing. So but it’s, I’m
Katie Brosch (00:34:01):
Guessing, Andrew, I’m guessing if somebody, somebody has an issue with the criteria that you’re laying out for them too prior to, prior to moving forward with the, with the rental process they may not be the best fit may not be the best fit of a, of a tenant for you, <laugh>
Andrew Schultz (00:34:18):
No, you’re right. Well, and it’s, and if they’re gonna ignore the criteria and go ahead and apply anyway and think that they’re gonna get some sort of specialized treatment or whatever the case may be, again, everything is laid out right there. It really boils back to like a fair housing thing. We take fair housing very seriously in our office cuz Fair housing violations get very expensive very quickly. And it’s one of those things that we would rather have a set of fair housing compliant criteria that we can point back to and say, listen, this was the criteria. They knew the criteria before they applied and it was up to them to make the decision whether or not to move forward or not. Right. So that’s kinda how we’ve been handling it. But I like, I think he’s kind of trying to ask if people are doing pre-screening and
Katie Brosch (00:35:01):
Yeah, for better
Andrew Schultz (00:35:02):
Or worse I kind of have stopped doing tenant pre-screening because more often than not the information you’re giving you’re, you’re getting is not accurate anyway. We’re more inclined to set up like an open house and just have as many people come through and look at the apartment as possible, give everybody the criteria at that stage and let them kind of self-select themselves out. But if I’m doing an open house style than I’m already committed to being there for whatever the hour, the two hours, whatever. So I’m not so much worried about pre-screening everybody that walks through the door at that point. They can read the criteria on the ad and then read the criteria on the application.
Katie Brosch (00:35:35):
Right. And I think there’s a question here. I think two, it might be not the next one, but the, the one after that question from Lily d she’s, she’s saying here, what do you include to check tenants? And she’s, she’s listing off two previous landlord references credit check, confirm with employer how long they worked there, verify income is three x with a pay stub and would you use neighbor slash friend or references? So she’s, she’s trying to, to list out just some of the different areas that she takes into consideration mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. but just curious Katie and, and Andrew just more so your thoughts just, just on what, what’s really your sweet spot or bread and butter when you’re, when you’re moving forward with this stuff?
Andrew Schultz (00:36:25):
Give me one second. I’m actually pulling up my underwriting guidelines so that I can kinda run through. So essentially we have a set of underwriting guidelines that we operate from. And there’s 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 categories that we look at. Income, credit score, payment history, criminal history, late renter, mortgage payments, and then landlord reference. Yeah. And everybody either it’s, it’s scores, I can’t show this cuz it’s an internal document. But it’s almost like the dmv, there’s a score assigned depending on how you perform at any given category. And you have to have x number of points in order to qualify for the apartment above that you qualify below that you don’t qualify. And our criteria pretty straightforward for income, we look for three times the rent. Net income, not gross, a lot of people look for for gross. But I prefer net our credit score requirement. And again, this is gonna be one of those things that is more of a property or a location dependent type thing, but we look for a minimum score of 600.
Andrew Schultz (00:37:24):
We look for a relatively clean payment history. I’m not gonna get into all my criteria here, <laugh> you know, relatively clean criminal background. But like we’re not doing friend or neighbor reference checks. I don’t, I don’t see a point to doing a friend or a neighbor reference check. I really don’t. And honestly, as far as landlord reference checks go, we don’t really call landlord references anymore either. And we had a lengthy discussion about that in the rent prep group on a, on a conversation thread the one day. But I don’t remember all of my response. But essentially it boils down to if I call a landlord reference in the state of New York and that person tells me that tells me something that they shouldn’t be telling me, gives me information that I can’t technically look at, such as eviction data as part of New York state law, we’re limited as to what we can, you know, know about someone’s eviction data.
Andrew Schultz (00:38:14):
It’s not worth it to, for me to get subjective information from somebody that could put me at risk of being in a fair housing violation. So we’ve all but stopped doing landlord verifications. The flip side of that is we tell the tenant that they need to be able to, excuse us, the applicant, that they need to be able to prove on-time rent payments to us via some sort of a ledger or show us your bank statements, show us the canceled checks. There’s a multitude of ways that you can show us that you’ve been making on-time rent payments that don’t require us to talk to your previous landlords. So that’s kind of where we’re at on it. But we do things a little bit differently than what other landlords do. But I can tell you that since we’ve stopped doing the landlord references, there’s been zero uptick in our evictions did this probably about 18 months ago. It might even be 24 months ago that we made that change and we haven’t seen any uptick in the number of evictions that we’ve had. So is the landlord reference even worth doing anymore? In my opinion, probably not. Yeah.
Katie Brosch (00:39:08):
Yeah, that makes sense. Cool. All right. I see one here from, I don’t know if you can find it, Andrew, but from Ha ha Lamb. Yep. Did you see that one? Yep. Okay. wondering how rent prep smart move package $38 plus 4 95 for judgments and liens is different than doing screening from Zillow for 29 95 or 10 Turbo Tenant $45 versus any other screening programs out there. Can someone from re prep give their opinion? Does re prep do anything special with their screening report with human eyes on it compared to other programs that just generate a credits credit slash screening report? Okay. My favorite
Speaker 3 (00:39:51):
Question,
Katie Brosch (00:39:52):
<Laugh>,
Speaker 3 (00:39:53):
What does Run Prep do special? Well he kind of answered it himself too when he said the human aspect. So obviously we have the two different packages in the TransUnion full credit report is an automated report from TransUnion. But he mentioned the and liens add-on. So judgements and liens cannot be reported on credit report as of 2017. So you will never find one on a credit report anymore. So we offer that as an add-on so that you can still get that information beyond the credit report. And that’s a live screener doing those searches for you and completing them and reviewing those records and what’s reportable and not. And I, that’s probably with our renter background check is the biggest thing is like there is a person eyes on the entire report. We’re verifying that each piece of information that you enter is correct down from the spelling to the name, the date of birth s s n, whether it’s a digit off or it’s completely off.
Speaker 3 (00:40:45):
And if we find instances like those, like we reach out to you directly to be like, Hey, this entire S s N doesn’t match, like can we re-verify this with you? Kind of giving them the them the heads up that the information’s not accurate. And let’s get the accurate information to get the most accurate screening report. So there’s a person start from finish on every piece of information to get that completed. And then probably the biggest thing is with criminal records we use a nationwide criminal search in our rent prep background check. But sometimes it warrants an additional search. Sometimes we only get partial information or you have a super common name and you’re trying to like really verify that it’s your person. So there’s live humans in our office doing that additional research truly at no additional cost to you to try and get you the best information that we possibly can.
Speaker 3 (00:41:32):
And again, if we run in into like weird situations or something’s just not quite adding up or we do take extra time to do that search you’re aware of each move we’re making and why to just, I can’t stress enough to literally get you the most accurate report. I love TransUnion’s full credit report, but their, their criminal search is also automated. So we’ve seen situations where it’s a super common name and there’s a criminal record that doesn’t actually belong to your applicant or something is just not quite right or there’s limited information. So when you have a person doing our actual rent prep background check, we’re trying to get you the most information to make the best decisions possible.
Andrew Schultz (00:42:11):
Well, and I know that there was a property management, property management software company, property management platform that was sued a couple years back and settled to the tune of like millions and millions of dollars because the reports that they were providing were not to totally accurate. There was either false negatives or false positives on some reports, which was in turn having an impact on the decisions that landlords were making on these tenant files, which was creating a disparate impact. And there was a lawsuit and they ended up settling it before it ended up being, I think it went to court and then they ended up settling it prior to the case being completely resolved. But it was a multimillion dollar lawsuit that that property management software ended up paying out related to the fact that the information was predominantly automated and there were no human eyes actually touching anything. So yeah, it is nice to see that rent prep does offer that that live human Yeah. On some of the reporting so that you know that someone’s at least reviewed it before you’ve reviewed it. Right. To make sure that the information is is as accurate as possible.
Katie Brosch (00:43:12):
Yeah, for sure. Okay, cool. I see, I see one in here. Question from Lisa. It is the, I am screening a potential 10. Okay. Question from Lisa. I am screening a potential 10 and apparently he is trying to use an I 10 individual tax identification number in place of a social security number on the Smart Move website and it won’t accept it. I spoke with a, a rep from a smart move and they are only set up to accept us as sends. So what do I do now? He owns a landscaping business and a window washing business and obviously pays taxes. Professor Google says that iTunes are given to people who are not eligible for social security numbers in order for them to pay taxes and can be issued to unauthorized immigrants. How do I vet him and can I ask if he’s here legally? What if he isn’t? Has anyone run across this before?
Speaker 3 (00:44:14):
Yeah, so from a screening standpoint we see iTunes kind of often more often than you would think. And for our rent prep background check, we cannot use an ITIN number to run our searches. And that goes down to our data providers require like the valid s s N to return results. So that part’s a bummer, but the TransUnion full credit report does accept iTunes. I feel really badly that he called and they gave him that information because we’re, we see successful smart move reports, I’m sorry, TransUnion full credit reports. With iTunes the process is a little more difficult for the applicant because if it’s in iTune they’ll most likely be prompted every time for a manual verification. So they actually have to call TransUnion and get verified by phone instead of just answering out of wallet questions.
Speaker 3 (00:45:04):
Like identifying questions on the actual link. Because typically with the iTune, they’re either newer or they just have less information to go off of so they have to do that extra verification process. But we have iTunes all the time with people use that report that’s just a little more difficult but they’re still able to get through it. They typically don’t have a ton of credit information attached to those either cuz they’re using it for, it’s a tax identification number. So typically the credit report will be bare or very minimal. But they’re still able to run the criminal searches with the name and date of birth and then they can also run the eviction searches with the name and addresses as well. So you’re still obtaining an accurate report in that sense. Got it.
Andrew Schultz (00:45:43):
So if someone has an I 10 and they’re trying to use their I 10 in place of their social security number, when you enter that I 10, is it automatically gonna go back and reference their entire credit profile against their personal social as well? Or no? Does it actually create kind of like a second tax pro or a a second credit profile, if you will?
Speaker 3 (00:46:02):
So if they, someone has, I just, if I’m not going in the right direction, just stop me. But if someone has an itin, they shouldn’t have an S sn. Mm-Hmm. And when they actually apply for their S S N, their ITIN becomes like connected in that sense. So if you have an S SN but you’re still using your itin, you should still be able to see what that person’s s n is. Like they do become connected so it would all become connected in some way or shape or form.
Andrew Schultz (00:46:28):
Okay. So it’s not like this person is, it’s not like this person has a DBA and they’re trying to use the I 10 for their D B A because that would tie back to their so or not their Yeah, their social security number mm-hmm. <Affirmative> unless they pulled a separate e i n number for the D B A. But again, in this instance, because it’s D B A, I think that the e I n would also tie back to the root social security number too. I’m just wondering if they’re trying to use the iTune number to hide bad credit on their, on their personal social security number. And I’m wondering if when you run the I 10 number, if it automatically is gonna pull that personal credit history to go along with it or not?
Speaker 3 (00:47:05):
Hmm. Yeah. I, I wouldn’t, I, from what I’ve seen before, I can’t say that I’ve seen like that exact instance or be able to like see it all the way through of that situation. But if you, so like in a, doing a wrench prep background check if we have an iTune, sometimes we’re able to like still run the iTune and see that it’s connected to a social mm-hmm <affirmative> in which case we then ask them to go and re-verify the social so that we’re pulling the right thing. So it does all connect and if someone has a social, they should not be using that iTune at all for any purposes anymore. So like once when they start with their iTune and then apply and get their social, that iTune kind of becomes like null and void and they should not be using that for anything anymore.
Andrew Schultz (00:47:46):
Okay. That makes sense.
Katie Brosch (00:47:49):
Cool. let’s go back to this question from Joey about the California college town. All right. Question from Joey. My house is in a California college town. I am considering renting out my house to four college students and I require them to have guarantors. One parent offered to be the sole guarantor for the group. I am thinking I want more guarantors that so I could go after multiple people instead of that one parent who could file for bankruptcy. What do you think?
Andrew Schultz (00:48:19):
I think he’s exactly right. I think in a situation like this where you have, we used to have a lot of college student rentals by university at Buffalo South campus and they were predominantly either single family or duplex style homes. And whenever we had students that wanted to rent those, we required the students to make application as well as whoever was going to be the parent guarantor. And we would require, unless it was like a grad student that had extensive like employment or something like that, they had their own income that met our income requirements, we would require every single person inside the home to have a guarantor. And that’s the exact reason for it is because you get into situations with some of these, especially college students in rentals and stuff like that, where there can be a lot of damages very, very quickly and only having one guarantor, they’re probably gonna try to fight it.
Andrew Schultz (00:49:06):
They’re probably gonna say, well, I’m only responsible for just my, my son or daughter’s nonsense. Well, no, you said that you were gonna be the guarantor for everybody, so now you’re on the hook for everybody. I would definitely recommend in the lease itself to make sure that all of the tenants are jointly and severely liable for not only the rent, but also the actions of one another. And then also with regards to the guarantor agreements, I would do the exact same thing. Make sure that every guarantor is responsible for everyone involved in the rental situation. And I think that the best way to explain this to the parents is, listen, we don’t want just one of you to be on the hook in the event that something happens, we want everybody to be responsible because that way this is actually going to get resolved by the person who it’s supposed to get resolved by. Cuz everybody’s gonna put pressure on that person to do the right thing. Versus if it’s just one person’s guarantor, that person’s going to wind up potentially being harmed by the actions of somebody else living in the unit that they’re not even truly connected to.
Katie Brosch (00:50:03):
That’s quite the the nice parent that they, that they have there that wants to be the guarantor for all of all of the college kids in the, in the college house.
Andrew Schultz (00:50:13):
<Laugh>, that’s crazy. Like I, I don’t think I’ve ever had a parent offer to be the guarantor for the entire house when there’s, I mean, we used to get, well, and even in this instance it’s four college students. We used to have four and five bedroom homes. There was no way that we were gonna get one parent to guarantor, all of that mayhem. And I
Katie Brosch (00:50:29):
Could, I could tell you my parents back, back in the day would not, would not do that. No,
Andrew Schultz (00:50:33):
No way. Well, and from a management perspective, like this is a paperwork nightmare you’re talking about at a minimum for applicant for applicant applications, and then for co-signer applications at a minimum to try to put that plus the leases, plus the guarantor agreements, plus this, plus it’s, it’s a paperwork nightmare, but Oh yeah. When the tenants don’t do what they’re supposed to do, when they wind up leaving you with a whole bunch of busted furniture and a clogged sewer line and water spraying out of the shower head, like it’s, you’re gonna be glad that you have that extra protection from all those other guarantors.
Katie Brosch (00:51:08):
Right. Okay. Good. I think probably, probably time for one more. Let us,
Speaker 3 (00:51:14):
Can I, I have a question for Andrew, if he doesn’t mind, or if he could share whether personal or just insights about the guarantor thing. Do you have a different application that you use, like for guarantors and do you screen them differently?
Andrew Schultz (00:51:26):
We don’t have a different application, but we do screen them a little bit differently. The only thing that really changes for us, excuse me, I’ve got heartburn. The only thing that really changes for us from the screening perspective is instead of three times net, we look for four and a half times net income. Okay. and the reason for that is because we understand that that guarantor has their own set of expenses. And then if we’re throwing another apartment on top of that, assuming that the, the tenant doesn’t pay themselves, we wanna make sure that they have the funds to be able to handle that extra burden, if you will. So we look for four and a half times net on the rental basis. So again, it’s not a perfect solution. I think it’s probably better than not having a guarantor in place or not screening a guarantor at all, but I think that the guarantor should definitely have to have a higher income requirement than what the, what the tenant would’ve. That was gonna be the case. Yeah,
Speaker 3 (00:52:17):
For sure. That makes sense. That’s a common question our screeners get is about how to like screen a guarantor versus the person who’s actually gonna be residing at the property.
Andrew Schultz (00:52:25):
Yeah. We use the same application and everything. We just tell ’em that they need to have a higher income requirement, but all the other requirements remain the same.
Speaker 3 (00:52:32):
Nice.
Katie Brosch (00:52:34):
Okay. Yeah, I think this will be the last one. And let’s do let’s take this question from Patty about the commercial property. All right. Question from Patty. I have a commercial property that needs a new roof who would probably take a week or two to complete the job. What do I do about the tenants while roofing? So there’s tenants that are, are currently living in a place that property that is getting a new roof. They do not want to endure the noise, but I still need to continue with their, with their clients. What should I do in this case? They do not want to endure the noise. So they don’t wanna be there while the, while the roof’s getting redone.
Andrew Schultz (00:53:15):
That’s kind of what it sounds like. Yeah. It sounds like it’s commercial leases and they don’t want, I’m sure there’s probably gonna be noise from the roofers up there working or whatever, and they don’t want to be interrupted. And I actually responded to this one in the rent prep Facebook group. I was actually on the thread for this one, and I essentially said, you do nothing. You tell them when the roof is gonna be done, you schedule the roof to be done at that time with the roofers and then the roof gets done. And if there’s special access that they need to do or there’s a door that’s gonna be blocked or something like that, let ’em know about it. But like the town of Amherst doesn’t let me know that they’re gonna close a road to do road construction on it, even if it’s right in front of my house. Like they’re, they’re just gonna do the work that they need to do. And it’s kind of the same situation here. As long as you’re providing notice to the tenants that we’re doing this work, you know, you’ve given them a timeline, it’s not gonna be an extended period of time. I wouldn’t prorate for something like this either. Especially when you’re talking about a roof. Like you’re literally improving the property so that the next time that their clients come in, they don’t have rain falling on them. So this is one gonna say.
Katie Brosch (00:54:19):
Yeah, I was gonna say like how much the right
Andrew Schultz (00:54:21):
Thing,
Katie Brosch (00:54:22):
How much notice is, and I know this is probably variable, but, and it depends on the situation, but yeah, that was my question. Like at at what point, at what point is it an issue where you would need to provide like, some sort of relocation or some sort of, you know, some being able to put them up in some sort of housing while, while while some construction or something like that is being done?
Andrew Schultz (00:54:48):
I mean, if it’s a situation commercial’s completely separate from residential, like there’s a whole different set of rules for that. So I wouldn’t know. And also, there’s no state listed here, so I wouldn’t know on that either. But realistically speaking, like even if it’s a residential roof, we’re just gonna give the tenants notice and then go ahead and do it. But like a situation, like what you’re talking about, maybe a situation where there’s flood damage in a kitchen or something like that. And the kitchen’s gonna be tied up for two weeks.
Katie Brosch (00:55:14):
I’ve got one for you. February I was living in an apartment with four other guys in Rochester. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> middle of winter, I think it was February. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And it was a three story house, very old, old home, one of those old, you know, old college homes. And we did not have working heat for the, basically the whole month of February. And we kept, you know, we kept bringing it up to the landlord. They thought it was a thermostat issue. They thought it was the actual system. Like couldn’t figure it out. Couldn’t figure it out, couldn’t figure it out. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, we were, we were at the point where we would have to shut doors and put little space heaters in the rooms to even be able to have people come over and hang out. And we weren’t provided, and this was my first rental property I ever lived in. So I was, you know, very naive. I think I was 21 years old and we were like, oh, should we be like compensated for like not having heat? Cuz I know that at least in New York state, there’s a minimum mm-hmm. <Affirmative> heat, I, I can’t remember if it’s 60. I don’t, yeah,
Andrew Schultz (00:56:18):
I don’t remember the exact number, but you’re right, there is a, there’s actually a law in New York state and it’s based on, but based on the time of the year and also the time of the day, you have to have two separate time and
Katie Brosch (00:56:26):
Nighttime
Andrew Schultz (00:56:27):
Day at nighttime. Yeah. Yeah. So like that’s a situation where it’s a health and safety issue. Like if the landlord’s not taking care of something like that, that’s a situation where the tenant should actually be proceeding to, at least here in New York, there’s a process. You go to the court, you withhold rent, you take care of the repair yourself, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But yeah, like that’s a health and safety issue. Like the landlord should be, realistically should be on top of that as soon as possible and should be working to resolve it and showing the tenant that they’re working to resolve it to get the, to get the job done. Yeah.
Katie Brosch (00:56:56):
And that was with, that was with a single, that landlord that I had only had the one property, so it was just a residential mm-hmm. <Affirmative> residential property. And then I had a friend a couple months ago that had that same issue during the buffalo storm with Yeah. A commercial, a commercial property. So it’s interesting to, to hear you say like, oh, yep. For some, for some things there’s different, there’s different rules for commercial versus residential. Right. but yeah, I definitely know that that cold temperatures within that is definitely something that if I was, if I was smarter when I was back 21, I would’ve at least pushed to, to have the issue resolved a little bit quicker.
Andrew Schultz (00:57:34):
Well, even like what you just mentioned with that blizzard that we had, like there were areas of the city that were without power for 3, 4, 5 days. Yeah. There’s nothing that you’re gonna do as a landlord in that scenario. Like we had a 12 unit building that fortunately they were only without power for about a day, but there’s nothing you can do for a situation like that. Like there’s no requirement for a landlord to have a backup generator, nor could we have even gotten to that property to put a generator in place to a temporary generator because there was so much snow and stuff like that. So there’s all sorts of different nuance that goes into stuff like this, but really what I think it boils down to, and every state’s a little bit different, but I think really what it boils down to is just making, you know, making the attempt to get the thing resolved and documenting the steps that you’re taking so that it, if I ever did come to it where you had a tenant that was saying, I wanna rent probate for the entire month because I had no heat. Well, yeah, they should probably be given something for not having heat for the entire month. But you at a, as a landlord should also be able to say, listen, it took me x number of days just to get a vendor out there, or whatever the case may be. So
Katie Brosch (00:58:36):
Yeah, for sure. Okay. I think, I think we are out of time.
Andrew Schultz (00:58:44):
All right.
Katie Brosch (00:58:45):
Two o’clock.
Andrew Schultz (00:58:47):
Yep. Cool.
Katie Brosch (00:58:48):
All right, well that one, that was a fun one. Yeah,
Andrew Schultz (00:58:50):
It was
Katie Brosch (00:58:50):
Good. Once we got our, once we got our feet under us, I think and, and Andrew hit play on Facebook live, I think, I think things started to, to really heat up. But Katie, definitely thank you for joining us.
Andrew Schultz (00:59:06):
Yeah, absolutely.
Katie Brosch (00:59:06):
You’re always welcome and hopefully we can, we can get you back on with your, with your busy schedule <laugh>. Thanks.
Andrew Schultz (00:59:14):
All right. And then, so for, for you guys, stick around after I hang up the call and we’ll make sure everything gets uploaded for anybody who is watching. If you miss the first part of this where we talked about the actual credit report, that video will be up and running basically as soon as we’re done with the live session, we’ll be available in our Facebook group. And then you’ll also be able to access it via both YouTube and the podcast as well within a few days. But other than that, thank you all so much for tuning in and watching our April AMA session. We do run these once a month and we generally post a request for questions in the Facebook group at facebook.com/group/rent prep a couple weeks ahead so that you can actually get your questions in and possibly have them answered live on this show. Again, thank you so much to Josh and Katie for joining me today. Guys, did you have anything else? Last minute?
Katie Brosch (00:59:58):
Yeah, nothing. Thank you.
Andrew Schultz (01:00:00):
All right, cool. Very good. Thank you so much. And we’ll see you guys next month.