HI 141 - Social Accountability & Rent Ready with John Simpson

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Hello awesome listeners, my name is Gary Pinkerton. Welcome to episode 141 of the Heroic Investing Show, a podcast for first responders, members of the military, veterans and anyone looking to improve your financial future and gain some freedom with your time. We teach America's heroes how to build passive income, build your startup business and safely grow wealth through real estate and other alternative investments. We help current and prior first responders put protections and systems in place to enable them to build a life where they can focus on their passion. That service or product that they uniquely are gifted to share with the world. That brings compensation to them, it brings satisfaction to them and hopefully it improves the world around them. That's my vision. Again, I'm Gary Pinkerton, co hosting this with Jason Hartman and I hope you enjoy this upcoming episode. Today it's going to be Jason talking with Mr. John Simpson and John is talking with him about a company that he invested in and helps run, which is called Rent Reporters. Rent Reporters is an awesome tool for those of us that are landlords. Kind of a new and up and coming tool that doesn't have a huge database yet. But what it does is it provides us an opportunity to see the credit payment history for our tenants. Now, of course we always do credit checks or hopefully we do. And so you see an individual's credit history, but what is not there is a history of rental payments. So maybe they pay, you know, the car payment. But I've had plenty of tenants who decided to pay the car payment but not pay me. So has that happened in the past? So you know, the solution to that has always been, well, make sure you call the previous landlord. Right? Well, that's really a bad idea in my opinion because, I mean, it's not a horrible idea. But don't. I wouldn't stake all of my opinion, my assessment on that because listen, if I have a bad tenant and I'm a person of less than reputable integrity and someone calls and says, what do you think about this guy? He's looking to rent at my place and I'm having trouble getting him out of my place. Well, Would I get rid of him by saying something wrong? I don't know. You know, hopefully, personally, I would not. I mean, I'm pretty sure personally I would not. But I think there's other individuals out there that, you know, don't beat up a tenant while the tenant is still in their property and they're looking to get rid of this person. So if they have a squatter, who knows what they'll do? I think that's a fairly questionable, I guess, reference. And then, you know, some people, like in one of his books, I believe it was Kenny McElroy said, you know, go back and look two landlords ago. You know, sometimes that's just hard to do. Like even finding history back that far, the tenant doesn't remember who they were renting from that previous time. Maybe you can daisy chain back, but that's just a lot of extra time. So what this service offers, it offers to the tenant, really. It's incentivizing the tenant to report their credit, right? So they have to sign up for it. And rent reporters will automatically report their payment frequency, whether they're on time, etc. And then the landlord actually gets incentivized monetarily from this company, from this system. And they do a pretty decent job of explaining that here on the upcoming episode. So I think you'll find interest in that. But the reason I wanted to run this one is because it speaks to this, what is becoming the new norm and is what is making the world a much better place, in my opinion. And that's social accountability. There's so much of our lives that is being recorded and watched and just observed by others. We're so transparent nowadays. In fact, I believe that, you know, we should assume that we're being recorded for eternity. I tell my kids that you live in a life in a world where everything you do is being observed by someone. Maybe it's a satellite, maybe it's your neighbors with a camera, maybe it's the guy in the next car. You know, road rage, where people get away with things like that is almost the thing of the past. And that's awesome, right? You know, it's awesome that hit and runs maybe are about a thing of the past. You know, I don't think it's too long before the cars just do 24 7, recording on their own of what's happening around them. And so they'll have the ability to, you know, stop these horrible events like that. So I think it's good that the social accountability is out there. It's Not a question of, you know, if you're being recorded. It's really of when will anybody look at it. And if there's. If they don't have time and they're not interested in it right now, they probably won't. But one day, if, you know, we need to find out something about an individual, like they're running for president, right, People will go back and they'll comb through everything that's available and stuff will come out of the woodworks that maybe you thought was not being recorded. So I just, you know, my own little public service provision there. I recommend everyone live their lives in an ethical way with integrity. Assume that you're being recorded, that you're going to be judged on all actions, no matter where they are, and I think you'll be far, far better off. But, you know, that's, in my opinion, also why things like Amazon and ebay are out there and being successful. I mean, they're changing the world. And the reason that online commerce and interactions with people across the globe happen, the reason that my clients will, you know, do business with me, having never met me or sat down with me in person, and we've just done video teleconferencing and communicating, is because they can check out my reputation online. So the reason all this can happen is because there is a transparent world out there. And so Rent Reporters is simply just applying that world of transparency that's becoming acceptable and commonplace to our ability to make better decisions about tenants. Hopefully it also holds our tenants accountable. They tried not paying in the past, and they realize that that's being recorded everywhere and they have a real tough time getting renting again, which is what we want. We want them to have a tough time renting from us, so maybe to hold them accountable to meet their commitments. And if so, what an incredible world we're starting to develop here. So I think it's awesome. I don't know that Rent to Reporters is going to change the world for us, but it's just another example of how the world is changing for the better. We're becoming a more accountable society and where we hold each other accountable and we recognize that it doesn't pay to be an unethical individual. So with that, with my little boost of optimism, I hope you enjoy this great conversation between Jason and John Simpson about the company Rent Reporters.

It's my pleasure to welcome John Simpson to the show. He is CEO of a very interesting company that is kind of blazing a new trail, and it is called Rent Reporters. Now, as you listen to this interview I want you to listen with two different mindsets. One, the mindset of a tenant. And since the tenants are our customers as real estate investors, listen from their perspective, from our customers perspective. But also you may have followed the advice I've talked about before that if you are wanting to or living in a high end home, you may be a renter as well because you know that the rent to value ratios are very favorable for the tenant in the higher end properties. And many of our listeners live in high end homes that they rent and then they own a lot of lower priced properties that they rent to other people. So you can listen from two perspectives and two mindsets to this interview. John, welcome. How are you?

I'm well. Jason, thank you so much for having me today.

It's good to have you on. Give our listeners a sense of geography. Where are you located?

We're sitting in Southern California. We're in Pasadena is where we're headquartered.

Yep, beautiful area. High taxes, but beautiful. I love Pasadena and I used to be a Southern California, California guy myself. So what is rent reporters and was this something you discovered or something you created?

I wish I could take credit for the, for the brainchild. I originally was brought to this opportunity as an investor. I sat on the board for many years. I joined as CEO six months ago. But as most good ideas are generated by others and not me. But this is a terrific one I wish I could take credit for.

So tell us about it. What is the idea? I mean credit reporting for renters for rent payments that's not on a credit report, Right. How did this come about and what does it do?

The challenge for renters, you know, there's 100 million renters in the country, there's 40 million, many of those who are credit invisible. And for the rest of us who have mainstream credit that ends up on a credit report. So our credit cards, our credit card payment history, our auto loans, if we owned a house that ends up on our credit report, but tenants get left out in the cold, that doesn't have any mechanism, there's no mechanism for that to reach their credit report. And so the idea was, wouldn't it be wonderful if we could help empower that tenant to really get the credit, if you will, all pun intended for their on time rent payments. And so we serve as a middleman. Our tenant hires us, our customer hires us to go validate that rent that they've paid over years with their landlord and then report that to the credit bureaus.

So the landlord then is now saddled with another task or they have to report rent payments to the three major credit bureaus. Is that how it works?

So we're facilitating that process. So we'll follow up with that landlord on a monthly basis or quarterly basis, depending on what that landlord would like, will be rolling out an online portal where they'll be able to do that directly online. But yes, they're going to be validating saying, yes, Jason paid his rent in the month of October on time.

Interesting. I would assume that landlords would kind of object to that by saying, hey, what's in it for me? Why do I care about this? But you had some good explanations for that when we were talking off air, so why don't you talk about that?

When I first came in as an investor, that was one of my concerns was really, we understand why the tenant would want to report their rent, but we still need the participation and the cooperation from the landlord. And that was a concern of mine. But what we found, the vast majority of the instances at 95% or more of the time, the landlords are perfectly happy to cooperate and they see this as an incentive for their tenant. I mean, the whole idea is that we have a customer that comes to us who's incentivized to pay their rent on time. And so that's a good thing for landlords to reinforce. But it is a process that exists in the world today, as I shared with you earlier, that if a tenant is buying a home, it's a standard part of the mortgage application or underwriting process to actually validate the rent they've been paying over the last two years. So this was not a brand new concept in terms of when we're reaching out to a landlord. They've dealt with this process for entirely different reasons, but the vast majority are really just happy to help their tenants and are glad that they care.

Okay, so take us through the mechanics of how it works. Like, I assume that the landlord has some kind of account on your website, and then they go in and whenever they receive rent every month, they just log that, hey, the rent was on time, the rent was late, or maybe some other things that they might say about the rent payment.

Yes, it's a very straightforward process, really. We're asking a very simple question. Once we've actually gone through the credentialing process of establishing the landlord is indeed the landlord, that happens one time at the very beginning of the relationship. And then it's just, it's just confirming, was the rent paid on time? It's a yes or no. And if it has not been paid on time, then we determine how many days based on when it was due, how many days it might be late. But again, it's very unusual for our customers to actually be late because these are the incentivized renters.

Now that is the big incentive. You just said it. Why would a landlord care if the tenant improves their credit report by, you know, the landlord's going to think, well, I've got an extra task, I've got to do something else. Right. But that becomes a lever, a motivation for the tenant to be a good tenant, to pay rent on time. Right. That's powerful.

Absolutely. I mean, there's the carrot and the stick. The carrot is they want to improve that credit score. The stick is they certainly don't want to undo all the good things they've done. They're very accountable. Very, very accountable.

Okay, fantastic. Well, tell us more about how it works. I assume there's no cost. Well, I hope so. But I don't know, maybe it would be worth paying a little bit for this because you've got that leverage to get the tenant to pay on time. How do you make money?

So this is entirely, again, a consumer facing model. This is not, we're not burdening the landlord with any costs in this process. What we really want is for them to cooperate and help us validate that rent. So the customer is paying us for an initial verification and we're able to report up to two years of rent history all at once. And we're at the same time reporting how long they've been a tenant. And if you think about what impacts someone's credit score, it's the length of your credit history, your payment history and the type of credit. Those are the top three factors in determining one's credit score. And so the rental, the rental trade line is a housing trade line. It's the most important trade line you have. It's the same again as a mortgage. So they're at that initial.

It's likely the largest payment the tenant makes. I mean, likely their car payment is lower, their credit card payment is lower, their, you know, student loan debt is lower probably than their rent payment. It's the biggest payment they make. Right?

Absolutely. I mean, with our customer base, you know, it makes up about 60% of their income. It's the most significant payment in their financial life for sure.

So yes, we're able to go back and really when you think about, it's that initial look back that is particularly powerful because we're putting that significant amount of history on their credit report all at once and as little as seven days, 10 days. And then we're continuing then on a monthly basis thereafter to follow up and verify that rent. So that customer is paying us for that initial sign up and look back it's $99.95. And then on an ongoing basis it's 995amonth for us to continue to validate and verify those rent payments and then report them to TransUnion.

Okay, so tell us a little more about how this comes about. Oh, and it's only transunion by the way, is it not? Equifax and Experian. Sorry, couldn't remember the other one for a moment.

Yes, the top three. So right now we're reporting to TransUnion. We're in the process of finalizing a reporting relationship with Equifax that should, we're hopeful to be able to report that in the next couple of weeks. And Experian we've been in conversations with for quite some time, the consumer initiated credit reporting model is a relatively new.

A new animal for the credit bureaus. And so it takes time.

To make them comfortable with the process surrounding it because really the world as we know it in credit is that it's the creditor.

Who is reporting that history. And a consumer is not initiating that process like they are.

Right. And this time the consumer is coming and saying, please report me because I'm not getting credit for all this rent I'm paying. I mean listening to you makes me think I would love it if you would go back to my last two landlords and, and tell them to report my rent payments. Heck, I made them all and I'd like them to report them.

They would improve my score.

What we're particularly motivated by is if you go to our website at www.rentreporters.com and you look at our success stories, they're very prominent. And we post a new story about every three to four weeks. And it's, you know, there's, you think about that hundred million of renters in the country and you really, it's amazing how many people have no credit score or they're actually invisible. And to have the opportunity, when you think about mainstream financial products, we forget about the world of payday loans and we think we forget about those who don't have access to the credit products that perhaps you and I take for granted. Being able to get.

A airline point credit card or having access to traditional auto loan financing. And if you look at our success Stories you can really see how we're changing people's lives and giving them access to the credit world. And what's so ironic in that space is that those who can afford credit the least pay the most. And if you follow the world of payday loans and people get caught into these cycles, debt they can't get out of, that would be difficult for anybody to get out of. But just by reporting their rent, they become a legitimate mainstream consumer with access to all these great financial products, obviously that we want to help them use responsibly. But that's really what, you know, what gets us really excited is about giving people access when they've been doing everything right, but without us, they can't even get into the credit world. It's one of these things. If you don't have it, you can't get it. But as a renter, we can help.

Yeah, no, it's like that first job we all try to get when we're a teenager. Well, hopefully when we're a teenager, you won't get hired if you don't have experience. But how can you get experience if you never get hired? Right. Same thing with credit. And that's true. So this is great because now a landlord, when they run a credit report, they can actually look specifically at rental payment history. Right. Is that available as a specific line item or is it really too early? And how old is this company?

So working backwards, we've been rent reporters was formed about three and a half years ago. But no, you're absolutely right. That landlord will be able to see the trade line, the specific trade line, and the payment history for that tenant. They'll be able to see any late. But going back for a full two years, that's the credit history. We'll be able to show of what their, what their payment cycle was month by month.

Fantastic. Okay, so two years back, can you get old landlords to do it? How does that all work?

Again, we can. You go to the current landlord and we can report a full two years of payment history. And. But no, landlords generally are very. It really is surprising in many respects because we're taking up someone's time, but they're very cooperative and if they remember that they had this great tenant, they're generally very happy to help. And we're able to report that additional history as well. Right now we're mainly focused on just the going back that two years. So our customers will add a landlord from maybe 18 months ago. But it also matters just in terms of how long they've been a tenant at all, how long.

That history will show up, not just the payment history, but how long that trade line has been open. And for many of our customers, that's many, many years. We had this customer call us about five weeks ago now and called to cancel. And our customer service team called to say.

And the customer being the tenant.

Right, I'm sorry, the tenant called to cancel. Our customer service team followed up to say, you know, my gosh, what happened? Was there a service failure? And they said, no, I've been a tenant for 15 years in the same house, and I paid cash for my rent every single month. I had no credit cards, and I was with you guys for 30 days, and I just bought my own house because of you. And we were able to take someone from no score at all. This was a fairly amazing story, and we've still been trying to understand some of the particulars of it, but she ended up with a 710 credit score, enough to qualify for a Fannie Mae written mortgage or guaranteed mortgage, rather.

It's just really quite spectacular when you think about, again, the things we take for granted. But if you're someone that's on the outside of that system, I can't imagine what she'd feel being able to buy her first house. I mean, that must have been a fantastic feeling.

Yeah, that really is. I think this is a great idea. I love this. Okay, so how much time? I assume that time on the landlord's part is probably the biggest obstacle. The biggest objection? How much of their time will it take to do this, to do this reporting of rental payments?

So in the very first. In the. In the very first contact we make in terms of. Just as I described the credentialing process, it'll probably take, you know, three to four minutes to go through a series of questions. But after that, it really. It should be seconds and not minutes. It's a very. Again, it's just saying.

Did Jason pay his rent on time? And the answer was yes. The vast majority of instances, very straightforward. And if they. If Jason hasn't paid his rent, they say, I haven't received it yet, but there's no additional action. And then the following month we'll follow up and say, well, did Jason pay his rent?

How are you doing that? Is it an email? Like, they just click on an email and say, yes, no.

Maybe we interact with the landlords in any way that they want to. So we can do that via text and a reply to text. We can do that through a landlord portal. That'll be coming out at the end of June where they would literally log on. They'll be able to see all of their tenants and just click paid, paid, paid. They'll be able to do it by email or by phone.

Okay, interesting. And setting up the account, the landlord setting up the account. How much time is that going to take them to do that?

That's really the three to four minutes in the very first. There's nothing for them because they're not the one having to establish the account. The tenant is the one doing all that legwork for them. The tenant's providing us everything, their lease.

So the tenant says, I rent the property at 123 Elm Street. Here's my landlord's email address. Email them and have them set the account up on their end. Probably, right? Something like that, yes.

So they're providing us the lease start date, the amount of their rent, the date it's due, the landlord's email address or phone number, as you suggest. And then we reach out to that landlord and said Jason hired us to verify his rent. He says that he's been renting for this period of time and that he paid his rent on time up through October. Is that accurate? Yes or no?

Okay, good deal. What if the landlord owns multiple properties? Is it three or four minutes for each account? I could almost see a landlord that likes this idea sending an email to their tenants and suggesting that they set up an account. Right.

That's very common for us. And it's really that interaction we have with that landlord is still going to be very short if we're doing it for a list of 10 or 50. We have some landlords where we're reporting 1,000 tenants and they'll actually just send us a file every month. We actually don't interact directly with that landlord. But one of the things we offer landlords is opportunity to essentially serve as a brand ambassador. And there's a revenue share, so there's a direct financial benefit to that landlord for helping refer us or introduce us to their tenants. And then they get $20 for every customer that signs up, or for every tenant that signs up, rather. And then they also have the benefit of the carrot and the stick in terms of getting those that monthly rent paid on time.

Yeah, I think that carrot and stick cannot be underestimated. I think that's pretty powerful. This is an interesting idea. What else do you want people to know? Maybe just any questions I haven't asked you.

As you think about, you know, as we think about how credit impacts people's lives. It's far broader than people understand, you know, in terms of just off the cuff. If you look at a relatively small action on the part of the Fed to increase interest rates by a quarter point, that's going to hit.

Credit cards directly by that same quarter point. And when you look at the, the average consumer who has debt has $15,000 in credit card debt. And that quarter point makes such a difference. And what, what you can do when you take some.

Score and you move them from 620 to 670, they're in a different interest rate world. You look at the impact on a car loan and you move someone 50 points from. If I move someone from 650 to 690, that can cut their auto loan interest rate in half. And so it's not just as I spent so much time talking about. Well, those that don't have access to traditional financial products really need us. But really everyone benefits from a higher score. If you're someone carrying debt, whether it be an auto loan or credit card debt, or you're trying to qualify for that mortgage, higher score just matters.

Yeah.

There, there is another. This is a carrot for us landlords, right? If you can help your tenant cut, they're very burdensome on many tenants because they're at the lower end of the credit scoring spectrum. Many times, if you can help them reduce their expenses and reduce these, you know, almost usurious interest rates that you see, especially in the really lower levels, then they can afford to pay you more rent and, and they won't be pressed every month. And you know, this could ultimately, although it'd be impossible to measure, increase, increase rents. I, I mean, it could, you know, it can allow people to afford more expensive homes or, you know, allow the landlord to bump rents more aggressively than they might otherwise be able to do or just get their rent in the first place because your tenant is not so pressed every month because they're paying exorbitant rates on their other debt. So there's a lot of really interesting aspects to this. I think it's a great thing. One thing I didn't ask you though, John, is, you know, rent is a little more complex when it comes to maybe reporting it in the sense that with a car payment, either paid the payment or you didn't. If you made a partial payment, they probably going to stick it in suspense and not give you credit for it until you make the full payment. Right. But with rent, you know, there can be complexities like, well, the tenant, they paid on time, but they didn't pay me all the rent because they're claiming that, you know, they have the right to withhold 100 bucks because something needed to be fixed and, you know, it gets a little more messy. Would you agree? And then how do you handle, like, security, deposits and condition? Are those things reported at all or is it strictly the monthly rent?

It is strictly the monthly rent. And we really don't experience many instances where we're having to reconcile, if you will, a holdback. Again, I think those, our customers are very motivated to pay their entire balance and they don't want there to be any other footnotes to it. Because when we report that trade line, it's saying they owed $1,000 last month. Did they pay it? And it is a yes or no question. There's an obligation. And that idea of offset that you're introducing really doesn't come into play. The obligation is $1,000 a month.

Yeah. And now there's a greater motivation to pay it because they know it's being reported.

So.

Good stuff. John, what else do you want people to know?

I want you to tell a family member or a friend because it's, you know, there's very few things in life where you're really able to do something great for somebody and really pass on a tip that will really impact their financial future. And for, even for those who are the, you know, the landlords that are listening, they have a family member, relative, friend that they can tell, you know, they can tell the rent reporter's story to, and they'll be doing them a great service. And, you know, we're here to serve and we want to have the opportunity to do that much more good for that many more tenants. So if you can tell someone, go to rentreporters.com we'd be super appreciative, and so will that person. You tell.

Excellent, excellent stuff. One other question, I just wanted to have you go back and share some of those stats that you shared at the beginning. And this is all like your business plan and how you see your market as a company. How many renters are there? And, you know, just any other stats that might be interesting to U.S. investors. I think that's. That's fascinating.

So when you think about when you. When I was considering joining as an investor, you know, the size of the market very much matters. And the renter market is 100 million tenants in the country.

That's just a tremendous market. And you look at, you look at the competition for quality housing, the competition amongst tenants to get the apartment they want is significant.

The shocking statistic for me, the hundred million, that makes sense. It's big, but it's easy for me to understand. What's harder for me to understand is the large percentage of that hundred million that remains credit invisible. And that doesn't mean having no credit score because that's many millions more. These are people that don't even exist in the credit system.

How many are those? 40. 40 million or something.

40 million. 40 million people in the country.

That's amazing.

Amazing.

Yeah. So. So some of the tenants you're dealing with, they don't even have a credit report. And that's. That's really dangerous. You know, that's very unsettling when you're a landlord to not be able to.

Have a file on them when someone applies.

Right, exactly. There's the social aspect of this is when you think about all the things you do in life and how many of them are really impacting the social good. We'd like to think that we're all trying to better the good for everyone in some small way every day. But when you look at the way that the credit system has been constructed in this country, it's heavily tilted for those who could otherwise qualify for a mortgage. But if you find people that are out that haven't been able to get into that mainstream credit system, they're just waiting to get mugged on the financial block because there's plenty of money out there to lend in hard money situations for those who are outside the credit system and they pay you serious rates.

That nobody should have to endure. And the problem is once they get caught in that cycle, they never get out. Or at least it's extremely difficult to get out. And that's the piece where I just. It's just extraordinary to me in terms of how something so small, of taking what you're doing every single month, paying your rent could actually transform someone's life.

It's not too many opportunities we have to do that.

That's fantastic. Good stuff. John, thank you so much for joining us, telling us about this very interesting business model. I wish you you a lot of success with it.

Jason, thank you for having me and thanks for listening to the rent Reporter story.

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