Apartment Innovation Strategies

The Wealthy Apartment Investor Podcast

Apartment Innovation Strategies

David Haldi, Founder and President of CredHub

CredHub is a rental payment reporting company that helps property managers reduce delinquent payments and add new revenue. David Haldi is the Founder and President of this company that hopes to help investors get the money they’re owed, while helping residents.

“We kind of have a program where everyone wins,” said Haldi. “The resident wins because they’re finally getting credit for their largest payment: their rent. We have 52 million Americans today that are credit-invisible. So we’ve developed a system that’s very automated that extracts the rental payment data and we deliver it directly to TransUnion, Equifax, and Experian. So it can increase their credit score on average 20-70 points.”

The tech includes a past-due revenue program that encourages people to pay on time. CredHub also chimes in ahead of the collections process. People will want their delinquent payment knocked off their credit score, so they deal with things before a collections agent has to get involved.

(2:30) – Patrick Antrim, CEO of Multifamily Leadership, points out that people view different bills with different priority levels. You’d think having a roof over your head would be your number one focus, but people are more likely to pay their cell phone bills first, since there are real and immediate consequences if you don’t: your phone stops working.

Haldi provides an example of one of his renters who hasn’t paid rent, yet somehow has a brand-new car. With an eviction moratorium, there isn’t much property owners can do. With CredHub, late payment can affect their credit.

(4:00) – Something like this can provide a huge competitive advantage for investors. You’re rewarded by a boosted credit score if you rent with a property that uses CredHub and you pay on time.

“It’s a huge marketing tool,” said Haldi. “We have certain clients that promote in the advertisement that they report your rental payments to the credit bureaus. One of the things they’ve found is that they get a better, qualified tenant who applies. Because if they’re going to game the system, then they’re not going to apply for residency at that property.”

Rent is increasing these days, and your ability to pay should be reflected on your credit score. Haldi says people’s credit score goes up an average of 42 points with CredHub, which is a huge advantage.

(6:30) – It’s good to occasionally test assumptions about standard operating procedure. If you think about why you do things the way you do, the answer shouldn’t be “because that’s how it’s done” – make sure it’s really the best practice.

For state’s that have eviction moratoriums, you can’t report negative impacts for not paying rent. No problem – CredHub can report a “neutral” impact in the meantime, then when the eviction moratorium is lifted, CredHub holds people responsible for not paying. It happens automatically.

“We can back-date up to 7 years of debt, and in order to get it removed, you get to put a forbearance plan in place and they pay you, but we will continue to report that as long as they owe the money,” said Haldi.

Haldi says it’s an easy way to get people’s attention.

“We had a client in Texas recently that had $200,000 in outstanding receivables, bad debt over the last