Overview

Rent Application Technology Services LLC ("Rent Application") uses 3rd party data vendors to provide the records for our credit, criminal, and eviction reports. We do not actually maintain the databases of these records. The reports are requested via a consumer reporting agency (CRA) which provides the data.

In the vast majority of cases, these reports are accurate, but it is important for both property managers and applicants to know that there is a possibility for errors due to the way the information is recorded and later retrieved. Unfortunately, this true for all reporting services available and is a byproduct of the available source data and the methodologies used to compile reports.

Why Are Records Not Always 100% Accurate?

Simply put, the original data at the source is often incomplete. With incomplete source data, it is impossible for CRA's to compile 100% accurate reports.

Credit reports are generally the most accurate. They are maintained by commercial, for-profit enterprises and the records are linked to uniquely identifying information including Social Security Number, date of birth, and addresses.

Criminal and Eviction reports are more likely to contain inaccurate data. They are compiled from civil and criminal court records maintained by different local governments nationwide that often have different formats, standards and practices for information storage and upkeep.

The reason why there can be seemingly false records displayed is due to the way our nation's court systems operate. Data is often manually entered and written on paper, or verbally transcribed by an officer of the law or court clerk. Uniquely identifying information such as Social Security Number are often excluded. Additionally, sometimes people don't fill out information such as middle names, correct addresses, drivers license numbers, date of birth, etc.

As a result, the reporting agencies use other methods for matching records to names.

With more common names, there can be a higher likelihood of misreporting due to inclusion of records for someone else with a similar name.

Process: How Are Reports Compiled and Why Does This Have An Error Rate?

Imagine the applicant's name is John Smith. There are many John Smith's in the country, and many of them have entries in the databases.

We have our own internal monitoring solutions in place which alerts us to any issues that may arise and address them as quickly and efficiently as possible. We cannot disclose any specific information about these security implementations as this information could potentially be used to circumvent these systems, however you can rest assured that we take a *proactive* approach toward the security of our network.

When the applicant completes an application, Rent Application requests a report on John Smith using the the applicant's:

  • Name
  • Social Security Number
  • Address
  • Date of Birth

The CRA retrieves a list of records matching the name "John Smith". Some of these have uniquely identifying information, such as an SSN. If, for example, one of the entries matches our applicant's SSN, it will be included in the report. If there is a NON-matching SSN, it will be excluded from the report. Unfortunately, however, most of the results usually do NOT have SSN's.

A similar process is used for other easily identifying information such as Date of Birth and addresses. Note here that given the number of John Smith's in the United States (there are about 46,000 John Smiths), even Date of Birth is no longer a unique identifier! However, the data vendor applies their tuned algorithms for providing the best guess for determining whether a record is a match, discarding the definite "NO MATCH" records and including the definite "MATCH" records.

After that, an automated filter is used to attempt to match the "UNCERTAIN" records using criteria such as city/state of residence, past address history, approximate age, etc.

Lastly, any remaining "UNCERTAIN" records are actually put into a "HUMAN INTERVENTION" state where an actual person reviews each record and makes a judgment on whether or not the record belongs in the report. This human reviewer is an expert at determining this, but sometimes there is insufficient source data for either the reviewer OR the computer to make a definitive judgment.

The general practice is to include (rather than exclude) records when it is uncertain if there is a match, so there is a bias towards seeing non-matching entries in the report rather than missing entries that should have matched.

False Positives vs False Negatives

Because the source data is sometimes lacking in quality and because the records aren't always uniquely identifying, data vendors are forced to make a decision between 2 types of reporting errors: "False Positives" or "False Negatives".

False Positive -- This is when an entry shows up in the report that belongs to another person. For example, if a report for John Smith includes a line item that belongs to a different John Smith.

False Negative -- This is when an entry that should be displayed in a report does not show up. For example, if the applicant committed a crime but it does not show up in the report.

The general industry practice is to err on the side of False Positives. This can seem extremely disconcerting to the applicant who sees an entry in his or her report that he or she knows does not belong. The reason this is the preferred practice is because a property manager or landlord would generally rather ask or inquire deeper about questionable records rather than mistakenly accept an applicant because a record wasn't reported.

As a property manager, landlord, broker, or leasing agent -- You should be sensitive to the process and understand that the standard methodology for requesting records favors inclusion of incorrectly matched records. Communication with your applicant is important and can help you avoid situations where you might exclude an otherwise great candidate. Additionally, we are happy to help provide guidance in such situations (though we are prohibited from helping make a judgment or assessing the accuracy of the record, we can help provide additional guidance or refer you to the actual data source in some cases where more detail may be available to help you assess whether a record is a true match).

As an applicant -- We understand that it can be frustrating and disconcerting to see something in your report that should not be there. It is important for you to communicate with your property manager or landlord. Additionally, please contact us directly if you'd like to dispute a record as we have a standard process for resolving the issue with our CRA.

Comparison To Other Services

Unfortunately, the reality of the reporting industry is that the underlying data in the industry is often lacking in quality, sometimes updated infrequently, or old records aren't stored indefinitely. In addition, the process described above is prone to a built in error rate.

As financial, criminal, and civil records in our society move towards automated electronic reporting, the data accuracy will improve, but the entire reporting industry is constrained by legacy standards and methods.

As a result, we are unable to guarantee 100% accuracy of records. To our knowledge, no reporting company can offer that guarantee.

At Rent Application, we strongly believe that education and open dialogue between involved parties is the best way to ensure a smooth applicant screening process.

Disputing Records

In the case of a dispute, the standard procedure is to report the dispute to the reporting agency.

As an applicant, send us an email via applicants@rentapplication.net including the:

  • Date and approximate time the application was completed
  • Link to your application
  • Landlord or property manager's email address
  • Type of report for which you are disputing a record (credit, criminal, or eviction)
  • Full line item(s) for the record you are disputing

This will be referred to the reporting agency. This process typically results in the agency acknowledging that it is a false positive if they can identify that the records aren't a match.

All reporting agencies query the raw records and use some sort of filtering like the method described in the section above regarding processing records.

As a result, re-querying the report via other companies after an adjustment may still result in the erroneous record being displayed.

Recommendations

First and foremost, it's important to acknowledge that the reporting system has flaws. Though the system is imperfect, it's the closest thing we have to a comprehensive reporting system, so it remains in widespread use today across many industries including tenant screening and employment screening.

Reports are accurate more often than not, but have a built in error rate, and as a result, professional management companies typically look at these as components of a larger decision and in the case of disputes, it's best to communicate with the applicant and examine other factors as part of the decision making process.

We try to do our best by working closely with our customers to make sure issues like this are resolved, but unfortunately we haven't yet found a way to completely address the problem.

Sources For Error

It's important to note that there are various sources of error that can cause inaccuracies in the final reported data:

  • Name changes (including after marriage)
  • Identity theft
  • Missing information in original records
  • Misreported or misrecorded information in original records
  • Common or overlapping names
  • Lagging electronic records -- sometimes local courts don't update their records frequenly enough
  • Old records -- sometimes not all records have been made available electronically

These are some of the sources of error and do not necessarily represent a comprehensive list of the possible reasons why a report may differ from the expected report.

Rent Application does not actually maintain these records and they are requested on demand from our third party data vendors then passed through for the applications.