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Latest property news
Tenant creditworthiness platform CreditLadder passes 1,000-branch mark
Rental payment recognition platform CreditLadder says it now has over 1,000 letting agent branches who have tenants on the service, making it the most widely available in the UK’s rapidly growing market for creditworthiness improvement, it claims. Started up in 2016 and based in London, until recently CreditLadder was alone in the private rented sector but it’s been joined by several competitors since after, in December 2017, HM Treasury announced a £2 million Rent Recognition Challenge to help kickstart innovation within the creditworthiness sector. These include Bud, Canopy, MoveMe and RentalStep, all of which are now involved in a feisty battle for market share, and a slice of the £2 million government funding. As The Negotiator reported last month, Canopy recently signed a deal with the John Lewis Partnership to help its employees improve their credit scores. Rent default Many of these services, including CreditLadder, claim their service helps letting agents differentiate themselves in crowded rental markets, enables agents to offer landlords a ‘value add’ to their service, and that tenants using them are less likely to default on their rent. This helps agents and landlords attract more reliable renters, it is claimed. “We’ve always believed good behaviour should…
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Latest property news
A Question of Property: Sheraz Dar, CEO of CreditLadder
The government is pulling out all the political stops to fix the UK’s ‘broken’ housing market and that includes helping more people to get on the property ladder. As part of this billion-pound push, HM Treasury last week announced that six tech firms had been chosen to compete in a £2 million race to develop a tech platform that will help tenants achieve home ownership more easily. CreditLadder.co.uk is one of them. It’s an online service that enables tenants to report their rental payments to Experian for free with the minimum of form filling. Its basic service is free for renters to use but the site charges agents a small fee to offer its service to tenants. Its website was the first in the UK to use Open Banking technology to enable tenants to report their rent. Tenants give CreditLadder permission to ‘read’ their bank account every month and verify that the rent has been paid in full and on time. CreditLadder is also the first in the UK to enable customers of Monzo and Starling Bank to report their rent to Experian. The Negotiator caught up CEO Sheraz Dar, who has a track record in both tech and property,…
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Latest property news
Rent Recognition Challenge reaches round two
The six companies who have made it through to the second round of HM Treasury’s Rent Recognition Challenge are announced.
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Latest property news
First tenants sign up to Open Banking rent-reporting service
The recent Open Banking initiative that promised a ‘revolution’ in the way bank account data can be used by third parties is already making inroads into the private rented sector, it has been claimed. Proptech firm CreditLadder says the first tenant has now signed up to its Open Banking-enabled rent reporting service and that over a thousand tenants have followed suit. The company, which calls itself a credit improvement platform and has processed £14m of rents since it launched, asks tenants to allow their bank account statements to be read each month by CreditLadder. It then notifies partner reference agency Experian, the largest in the UK, about each payment including whether the rent was paid on time and in full. This payment track record is then added to their credit history by Experian. Letting agents The service, which is being offered to tenants for free, generates its income both through a premium tenant service and a paid-for package for letting agents. CreditLadder says it already works with 700 agents branches in the UK. “When CreditLadder launched its Open Banking service last month we were acutely aware that the take up maybe held back given the newness of the technology,” says…
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Features
Boarder controls
The electronic ‘tenant passport’ is proptech’s challenge to traditional referencing. Andrea Kirkby asks if this a game-changer.
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Latest property news
Open Banking makes its debut in the rental market following new service launch
Online rental payments platform CreditLadder says it is the first in its sector to launch an Open Banking service that enables tenants to improve their credit score without the need for a lengthy sign-up service or their landlords’ permission. These restrictions were a key criticism of the tech sector by Lord Bird when he launched his draft Creditworthiness Assesssment Bill recently in the House of Lords. CreditLadder says it has already processed rental payments worth £14 million since starting up in 2016 and claims to be the first service of its kind in the UK to integrate its tech with the Open Banking ‘revolution’. Nine banks in the UK now offer an Open Banking feed or API that enables third parties such as CreditLadder to plug into and read the amount and date of transaction going into people’s bank accounts, if they give permission. The nine banks offering this so far are Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds Bank, Halifax, Natwest, RBS, Santander, Nationwide, The Co-Operative Bank, First Direct and TSB. Individual tenants can sign up to the service, but it is also open to letting agents to offer tenants as an ‘add-on’ to their lettings proposition. Credit history CreditLadder records rent payments…
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Latest property news
Leading payments platform says it is “hard to believe” rent isn’t recorded by credit agencies
Rental payments platform PayProp has called for rental histories to be added to tenants’ credit scores which is says will help re-ignite the first-time buyer property market. The company, which started in South Africa but now has a substantial presence in the UK and elsewhere, says enabling tenants to use their regular rent payments to improve their credit scores would help more first time buyers get on to the property ladder, and also incentivise tenants not to pay their rent late. “Many tenants have been paying rent on time for years, if not decades. The fact that this does not carry the same weight as a mortgage payment is hard to believe,” says Neil Cobbold, CEO of PayProp in the UK (pictured, below). “Thanks to the rapid growth of the private rental sector, more tenants are paying higher rents. Taking cognisance of rent payments would therefore make perfect sense, encouraging the next generation of property buyers. “Recording and counting rent payments towards credit scores is a modern phenomenon and therefore it needs a modern solution,” Credit reference agencies and lenders in the UK are not required to take rental payment into account when ‘scoring’ borrowers, and only Experian does so…
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Latest property news
Student lettings app launches promising to improve student credit scores
An online-only student lettings agency that The Negotiator revealed was preparing to launch has now gone live, although with a new twist to its business model. SPCE, which has an inventory of 50,000 student rooms across the UK and partnerships with six universities plus institutional property investment firm Hines, says it is to also offer students the opportunity to improve their credit scores via credit agency Experian. Other unusual features of its service include enabling landlords and tenants to rate each other and the use of single tenancies rather than joint agreements. SPCE, which enables student to find and sign contracts for properties, set up rental guarantors and talk to their landlord all through a single app (pictured, right), is burning through the £280,000 it received from funding platform Seedrs earlier this year. It also about to launch an online service and dashboard for landlords. “Not only are we going to make it easy for students to find desirable properties and for landlords to locate new tenants, but we are also going to make communication between both parties throughout the tenancy absolutely effortless,” says CEO Leon Ifayemi (pictured, left). “By enabling students and landlords to receive ratings we are also…
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Latest property news
MPs back move to add rental payments to tenants’ credit scores
Millions of tenants may soon be given a leg up onto the property ladder following a debate in parliament yesterday afternoon led by MP Paul Scully (pictured, right). An all-party selection of MPs sat down in Westminster Hall to debate an e-petition raised earlier this year calling for on-time rental payments to be recognised as evidence that mortgage re-payments can be met. Created by Plymouth roofer Jamie Pogson (pictured, left) during a ‘rant on the way to work’, the ordinary-sounding petition 186565 went on to be signed by over 147,000 people and gain its day in parliament. The debate included several high-profile MPs including Stephen Barclay, the Economic Secretary to the HM Treasury, who spoke on the government’s behalf. He gave Pogson and the millions of tenants desperate for any help on to the property ladder a strong signal that lenders may soon be compelled to add tenants’ rental payment to their credit histories. Stephen Barclay said he agreed that rental payments should be one of the key pieces of information included in credit files, and that he would talk with interested MPs with a view to proceed with a solution. “A gentle nudge to encourage the credit referencing sector…
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Latest property news
Rents rising again across the UK, index says
Average new tenancy rents in nine out of the UK’s 12 regions increased last month, according to the latest rental index from Homelet. The letting services firm says rents increased on average by 1.1% across the UK year-on-year, and that rises were highest in Northern Ireland where they increased 2.4% during July alone, and 5.4% year on year. Tenants are now paying £10 more a month to rent a property than a year ago, or £925. Scotland had the next highest rents rises at 3.6% followed by the East Midlands at 3.2%. Rent reductions But rents have continued dropping in London, the South East and North East, the index shows, by up to 1.7%. This follows national decreases in rent during April and May this year, and the rent reductions in London are the fourth in a row for the capital. A year ago rents in London were rising by 6.6%. “It’s often been the case in recent times that rents have strengthened over the summer period,” says Martin Totty, CEO of Homelet (pictured, left). “It’s a time when renters contemplate moving, demand increases, tenancy terms are set, and when the anniversary of the tenancy often occurs. “This year, that…
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