CARROLLTON, Texas (August 24, 2010)—LeasingDesk (www.leasingdesk.com), a leading provider of risk mitigation systems for the multifamily industry and a wholly-owned subsidiary of RealPage, Inc. (www.realpage.com), today launched Credit Optimizer, a new enhancement designed to improve leasing operations by systematically adjusting resident screening thresholds to maximize a community's occupancy and profitability. Credit Optimizer's screening flexibility helps property owners and managers improve occupancy levels by automatically adjusting a community's lower credit thresholds, allowing applicants to qualify for a lease while minimizing a community's overall financial exposure from higher credit risks, fair housing violations, or asset devaluation.
"In an effort to overcome low occupancy levels and improve the property's bottom line, owners often arbitrarily lower their screening thresholds," said David Carner, president of LeasingDesk. "The resulting problem is increased exposure from bad debt, and over the long term, asset devaluation. Credit Optimizer combats these problems by scientifically adjusting screening thresholds to allow more applicants to qualify, and transfers additional credit risk to the applicant through increased deposit and/or rent."
The Associated Press recently reported that American consumers' credit scores have fallen dramatically, making them poor credit risks for lenders. Therefore, sustained occupancy will have to rely on an ability to accept some applicants who have moderate credit issues, while mitigating cost of risk for owners.
Credit Optimizer helps to ensure that a community maintains a healthy balance of residents with acceptable credit versus unfavorable credit by controlling the percentage of approved applicants who fall within groups of good, moderate, poor, and very poor credit. The system statistically determines the dollar value of risk associated with each credit level and then adjusts the rent price and/or required deposit to offset the increased risk.
Credit Optimizer delivers value because it not only combats occupancy challenges resulting from ever changing local economies, but it does so in a scientific and measured way to minimize the financial risks associated with bad debt. It also lessens exposure to fair housing violations by removing the ability for leasing agents to arbitrarily change the acceptance thresholds.
By controlling the percentage of residents within each credit threshold to maintain the overall credit worthiness of a community's total occupancy, Credit Optimizer further protects owners from the potential downfalls of randomly lowering screening thresholds. Once resident levels begin to stabilize, the system automatically re-adjusts the lower thresholds to ensure the credit standing of all future applicants is again in the acceptable range.
Credit Optimizer is available as part of the newest release of LeasingDesk Screening. The updated platform also includes a new look to its user interface and an enhanced scoring model.
About RealPage
RealPage provides on-demand solutions that enable owners and managers of single-family and a wide variety of multi-family rental property types, including conventional, affordable, privatized military, student and senior housing, to manage their marketing, pricing, screening, leasing, accounting, purchasing and other property operations. For more information, visit www.realpage.com.