> A bad credit score doesn't really mean you've made bad choices.
It doesn't necessarily mean this, sure. But, if we found a thousand people with bad credit scores and did a deep audit, we wouldn't discover 1000 who had unavoidable, unpredictable misfortune. We likely wouldn't even find 500.
> Shit happens, and it is naive to think
I've heard alot of "shit happens" excuses over the years. Few of them struck me as "no matter what this person might have done, they were just fucked from day one". Shit doesn't happen, either in frequency or degree, nearly enough to explain the bad situations many are in. They tend to have alot of minor misfortunes sprinkled here and there among gigantic piles of poor decisions.
>And it isn't like you are going to get credit for paying most normal bills on time. Landlords and utilities rarely report positives to the agencies.
Funnily enough, I work adjacent to a company called Rent Dynamics, and one of the features that they offer is positive credit reporting for those who pay the rent on time. There are others that do this too.
I'm still skeptical of the concept.
Should some company hiring say "sure, he defaulted on that $18,000 of credit card debt 3 years ago, but look... he's paid his rent on time for the last 4 months knowing that if he screws that up he'll be evicted, and that counts for something!" ?
Is that feature worth the slow accretion of extra (and sometimes hidden) fees that are pushing housing/rental prices higher in an era of skyrocking housing costs? Remember, this isn't something that shows up for luxury apartments, it's for the not-quite-slums apartments.
We might find that landlords will do positive credit reporting here in the next few years, and that it's not the good thing you think it to be.
> Should some company hiring say "sure, he defaulted on that $18,000 of credit card debt 3 years ago, but look... he's paid his rent on time for the last 4 months knowing that if he screws that up he'll be evicted, and that counts for something!" ?
No, they shouldn't be looking at this in the first place, because it is -- at best! -- tangentially related to job performance. If you're worried that your employee is going to be distracted by personal financial issues, taking away their option to have steady income certainly isn't going to fix the situation.
> Is that feature worth the slow accretion of extra (and sometimes hidden) fees that are pushing housing/rental prices higher in an era of skyrocking housing costs?
What does this have to do with anything? Housing costs are skyrocketing primarily because of housing scarcity in desirable places to live (where existing residents have enacted policy to restrict further building). On top of that, we have wages that have not been keeping up with inflation, and a general increase in income inequality that helps to push housing further out of reach.
> Funnily enough, I work adjacent to a company called Rent Dynamics, and one of the features that they offer is positive credit reporting for those who pay the rent on time. There are others that do this too.
I actually feel that such companies should not be allowed to report a tradeline.
No company / landlord (and doubly so when you go with, as you say, 'not-quite-slumbs') is offering you rent in arrears. You're paying, in advance, and no credit was extended to you.
To me this is a bastardization of the credit system that's only got potential positive reporting as a side effect. Let's be real, companies like yours real customers are landlords/property managers, not tenants.
Thank you for this comment. You have shared an insight I had not come to see on my own. I doubt I would have come to it by myself.
> Let's be real, companies like yours real customers are landlords/property managers, not tenants.
They are very much so. But if we can help them be more attractive to their customers (renters), then our own products might be more sought after. Or at least that's the theory my bosses operate from.
It doesn't necessarily mean this, sure. But, if we found a thousand people with bad credit scores and did a deep audit, we wouldn't discover 1000 who had unavoidable, unpredictable misfortune. We likely wouldn't even find 500.
> Shit happens, and it is naive to think
I've heard alot of "shit happens" excuses over the years. Few of them struck me as "no matter what this person might have done, they were just fucked from day one". Shit doesn't happen, either in frequency or degree, nearly enough to explain the bad situations many are in. They tend to have alot of minor misfortunes sprinkled here and there among gigantic piles of poor decisions.
>And it isn't like you are going to get credit for paying most normal bills on time. Landlords and utilities rarely report positives to the agencies.
Funnily enough, I work adjacent to a company called Rent Dynamics, and one of the features that they offer is positive credit reporting for those who pay the rent on time. There are others that do this too.
I'm still skeptical of the concept.
Should some company hiring say "sure, he defaulted on that $18,000 of credit card debt 3 years ago, but look... he's paid his rent on time for the last 4 months knowing that if he screws that up he'll be evicted, and that counts for something!" ?
Is that feature worth the slow accretion of extra (and sometimes hidden) fees that are pushing housing/rental prices higher in an era of skyrocking housing costs? Remember, this isn't something that shows up for luxury apartments, it's for the not-quite-slums apartments.
We might find that landlords will do positive credit reporting here in the next few years, and that it's not the good thing you think it to be.