I had a “what if” moment on Saturday…
What if we created a business model that was predicated on a renter’s resume and resulted in 1-click leasing. The renter’s resume, in short, would include everything we collect on our traditional property applications with the difference being a third party validating all the information to include some sort of score. Then, somehow we push this information through our various posting sites to include ILS’s like Apartments.com, Forrent.com, our own websites, etc. The theme would be ease – not unlike buying a book at Amazon.
The essence of the business model would lead to one click leasing via our various websites and offices. I could see craigslist posts, forrent pages, apartment.com pages and even our very own websites embedded with a renter’s resume one click lease widget. Not a reserve this apartment button, rather a one click and your done button. If you really needed it, there could be an option that reserved an apartment until the prospect had a chance to view it. And, in that case the sales person, via their respective property manangemnt systems, could do a one click lease contract pre-populated with the renter’s specific information. Throw in a couple of digital signatures, a credit card swipe and an automatic emailed .pdf and your done.
Related: Equity Residential Renter’s Resume
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Very interesting concept. We’ve been working with landlords to try and fill the gap between credit reports and public record searches with an online archive of reference checks and scores, but I like the idea of pulling the whole thing together into a rental resume.
Gary,
Thank you for taking the time to continue the conversation. I hope to see someone run with the idea as I think it would really bring rock star status, in terms of the customer experience, to the leasing process.
Have a compelling day.
M
This is an interesting idea. In my mind the question is whether the value offered to the consumer in terms of convenience would be worth the time and effort to complete a rental resume, and also the loss of privacy that it would entail. We trade convenience for privacy all the time, to make something like this work we need to hone in on which data elements are critical, where they come from and what the value proposition is to the renter. Because we have a once-yearly transaction typically, there isn’t the convenience factor of a site where you’re purchasing 10 times a year.
I think as an industry we’d first want to work on standardized ways to present and distribute apartment community information so that renters can receive it on any device in any format that they want and interact from any venue that they’re comfortable. Only then will we have some of the credibility necessary to make a fair exchange of data with someone being asked to give up their most personal information.
Having said all of that, I think that RentBureau and CreditRetriever already have many of the elements of a renter’s resume in their rental performance reporting products. For those who are interested, it would be worth checking with the folks at each organization.