Welcome and Overview
Well, greetings and welcome back. Most of you have seen this video on how CredHub works, how the whole system works, and understand that. But when you first saw it way back in the beginning, you didn't have much context to fit it in. It's like getting a little tiny piece of a puzzle without seeing the whole big picture and not knowing how it fits in. So you've watched through a ton of videos.
You've got a lot more information. It's really time to watch this video again. So I'm just going to hit the same button, going to go through the same. It's only eight or nine minutes long, but now that you've learned a whole lot, this particular video will make a lot more sense to you. So I know you've watched it once.
Want you to watch it again. Here we go. Greetings. My name is Robert Locke. I've been in property management industry for 40 years and been a national trainer for about 15 of those years.
When I saw CredHub at the broker owner conference back in April of 2019, I was absolutely amazed at the new system that they put together for the property management industry, and I immediately developed a relationship with them to help get the word out to the property management industry because this is a game changer. This is something that the industry has been looking for decades. This is something that is going to move the property management industry from just the landlording business up to the status of a mortgage company or a credit card company because you're going to have the ability every single month, fully automated and a revenue generator, to report to the credit bureau on every one of your tenants.
And it's a power over tenants like you have never had before. Now, what I'm going to do is take this little diagram and I'm going to break it up into pieces, and this video is going to go 12, 13 minutes. I want to explain to you the details of how it works. And it's a little granular, this little down in the weeds, but if you understand how it works, that's going to be a lot easier to answer all the questions you've got about how this is going to benefit your company. So let's break this down, okay?
CredHub and Credit Bureaus
Talk about how it works. Let's start with the credit bureaus. Now, they've got all the power, don't they? We've been wanting to become a part of the credit bureau in this industry for years, and we've been locked out because when tenant screening companies came in the mid-80s, the credit bureaus stopped dealing with people our size. Doesn't matter if you've got 3,000 to 5,000 houses, you can't become a direct member of the credit bureau.
You're too small. And that's the genius of what CredHub has done. They cracked the code to figure out how to have a relationship with a credit bureau that they can offer to managers, whether they're managing 40 houses or 4,000 houses or even private landlords with properties that they want to report. So the power all rests with the credit bureau. Now, CredHub is the company that came along.
They're a data company. They're a technology company. And Dave Hawley, who is the founder and president of the company, had friends in high places with the credit bureaus, friends and relatives, and he was able to build over a period of about 18 months, a relationship with them where they offer their service through CredHub to the property management community, you and me. Okay?
So the CredHub has a relationship with the credit bureau and provides a platform to offer these services to the property management industry.
Data Management and Reporting
So the word enrolling or subscribing to the CredHub service is this relationship that you're going to have with them in order to use their data management system. Okay? What's going to happen is you're going to give them once a month access to the tenant database. In other words, whether it's Propertyware, Folio, Yardi, Buildium, it doesn't matter who it is. Every month, CredHub is going to reach into that database and extract from it just some very limited information.
They don't want a lot of information, just a little bit. The amount of the rent, the social, the birth date is needed to report to the credit bureau, but they're also going to have renewal dates and some things that they're going to turn around and generate a report. Every month, you're going to get a report that's going to be sent to you from the CredHub system. And at the bottom of that report are all the tenants that owe zero balance. You're going to report them paid as agreed.
At the top of this list are all the tenants with an outstanding balance. So obviously, the only thing you have to worry about is whether or not you're going to report these people at the top as owing a balance and hurt their credit, or whether or not you're going to check a box and move them down into the other category where you're going to show them paid as agreed. And that's the control point you have over this that is just crazy good. Okay?
Control Points
So let's talk a minute about what the-- okay, so when you hit the submit button, that report goes to the credit bureau in a format that they understand, and it'll affect every tenant credit report individually. Now, let's talk about the control points because you've got three controls over this that are very important to us in the management business. The first control is what day of the month does CredHub pull the data? So you're not going to want to do this on the 5th or the 10th because there are going to be too many rents outstanding. You don't want to do it on the 28th or the 29th because that doesn't give you enough time at the end of the month to report the data.
So you're going to select a date with CredHub in your enrollment process, and it's going to be the 15th, it's going to be the 20th, it's going to be the 23rd, somewhere along in there. So you've got a week at the end of the month to manage the report because it's going to take you 15 to 30 minutes a month, depending on how many properties you have. Okay? The second control is what is your dollar threshold for reporting paid as agreed? In other words, you could pick $500, which means if somebody has a $450 outstanding balance, you're going to report them paid as agreed.
The system will do that for you. If you pick a threshold of $50 a month, what's going to show up at the top of your report is any tenant who owes more than 50 bucks. Okay? So the only ones you have to deal with are the ones at the top of the report. It's a fabulous system.
Now, the third thing that you control is when do you submit the data? In other words, you don't want to submit it probably on the 15th or the 18th. You're probably going to want to submit it 25th, 26th, 27th, somewhere along in there. And they also have a fail-safe system that if you're in a hospital or a cruise in Alaska, or if you're on a fishing trip in Montana, or sailing around the Bahamas in a sailboat, things typically that property managers do on their vacations, right? That they have a fail-safe, so on the 27th of every month, if you haven't put the submit button, they hit the submit button and report it to the credit bureau.
Okay? Rock solid system, fully automated. The only thing you have to do is look at the outstanding balances at the top, and we've got specific training videos on what threshold should you pick and why.
Cost and Setup
Now, let's talk about the cost. There are three different topics here. One is the setup fee. Now, the setup fee typically is $500. This is July of 2020.
Next year it might be $1,000 or $2,000 or $3,000, I don't know. But things move, big companies change. They're on the front end of this.
System Enrollment and Setup
So today it's $500 to enroll in the system. Why? Because there's a bunch of setup. This is a technology thing, and the security controls are off the chart because you're moving sensitive data from your database across thresholds or across platforms to get it to the credit bureau. So the security that the credit bureau requires is very, very high.
Data security is a big deal in this system. All right, so there's a setup fee.
Cost Structure and Reporting Requirements
The second one is the cost to you. Now, you don't pay anything for the system until the tenant's paying you money. So there's no downside to this. You're not committing to paying $5 a month to CredHub from day one. You get all the reports day one.
All your tenants are reported the first month you're in the system, whether they've signed up or not, because that's the way the credit bureaus work. You cannot pick and choose what tenant you're reporting. Wells Fargo cannot pick and choose which mortgagees they're reporting to the credit bureau. GMAC Finance cannot decide who to report and who not to report. The credit bureaus mandate that all tenants are reported every month.
So CredHub covers the cost of the reporting until you have time to set up your tenants. Okay? Fabulous deal. Your cost ranges from $3 to $5, depending on the program that you choose for your tenant. It's $3 for the credit reporting.
It's $2 for identity theft. And we've got all kinds of answers to your questions to just lock that in. It's either $3 or $5.
Tenant Reporting and Pricing Flexibility
Now remember, you don't start paying that until your tenants have signed up and are paying you money. So this is only an upside. There's no cost. There's no downside to you. What the tenant pays is up to you.
In other words, we'll go through training on this, and you can decide that you're going to choose the $3 a month plan. You're going to charge the tenant $6.95 a month or $8 or $9 or $12, whatever the number is. And we've got training videos as to how to price this to the tenant, depending on your model. Because you've got to think through Section 8 tenants and cosigners and special needs adults that are living with parents and things like that. But we've thought all through that stuff.
We know what the answers are. So how much the tenant pays is up to you. Okay? And we've got a whole video just on pricing strategies for tenants because you can create categories, rents under $1,000, rents over $1,000. There's a whole bunch of ideas that we can share with you because we know how this system works.
System Workflow and Automation
So this is how the system works. CredHub has a relationship with the credit bureau. You develop a relationship with CredHub. Every month, CredHub reaches into the database and pulls the data, puts it in their system, and provides you a spreadsheet. You've got then a week or so to make some changes in that spreadsheet.
Just click a button. That's to report somebody paid as agreed instead of an outstanding balance, okay? So you have control over the system, and these are the costs that we've discussed. Fabulous program. Wish we'd had that 30 years ago when I joined Equifax because our system was all manual, and we had to enter the data of 50 new tenants moving in, 20 tenants moving out.
It was very manual. Fully automatic, take you 15 to 30 minutes a month. Now, you want to know more about it, go to credhubsupport.com/reasons.
Program Benefits and Support
Reasons why you should get into this program. There's a whole library of videos there. Just reasons why you should get into this, okay? If you're already in, credhubsupport.com/enrolling. And in that, we've got a whole set of libraries of videos and documents to help you in the enrollment process.
And then when you're enrolled, credhubsupport.com/training. If you want to have a conversation with us, we'll help you through it, [email protected]. Well, thank you for taking the time to listen. Get on this program. Be the first in your area.
Don't wait too long. Others are going to have a leg up on you if you wait too long. And for signing up new owners and to have this power in your system is something that's going to really move you to a totally different level. Thanks for hanging out with us today.
