Experian, one of the nation’s largest credit reporting firms, is expanding its data collection of rent payment histories, allowing South Florida renters to improve their credit scores by paying their rent on time.
Experian is the first credit reporting agency to do so, with about 20,000 reports so far on rental units in Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties acquired through new subsidiary, RentBureau.
The unit collects information on payment history mainly through large property management companies. Some of those records — mostly the good credit histories — may already be in Experian’s credit files
, said Brannan Johnston vice president and managing director of RentBureau.
Last month, Experian announced plans to further expand its rental data, this time from mom-and-pop landlords via ClearNow, a service that collects rent electronically from tenants and passes it on to owners. The North Carolina-based ClearNow serves about 170 landlords in South Florida and the rest of the state, said company spokeswoman Ryowon Kim.
Now tenants who pay on time will have a chance to improve their credit scores, Experian’s Johnston said — himself a life-long renter. Many of the bad, non-paying rent reports from both large and small landlords would already be on credit reports if collection agencies had been brought in to go after missing rent payments, he said.
Experian’s expanded credit checks make sense as there are more renters than ever after the housing bust — an estimated 1.9 million tenants and their families in Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties, said real estate consultant Jack McCabe of Deerfield Beach. That’s about a 20 percent jump from five years ago, McCabe said.
And that number will only go up as more South Floridians see renting as a long-term option, he predicted.
“It makes sense as people repair their credit histories,” McCabe said. Many South Floridians had their credit histories dinged after they went into foreclosure or had short sales, he said.
