alt Hacker NewsOk, do rent next.
Paying rent doesn't count towards your credit score (at least it didn't a decade ago when I was getting my mortgage). And it's a glaring signal of how the system isn't built for what it claims: evaluating your ability to pay obligations on time. No, the system is built to trap people in poverty and enrich the rentier class.
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Have seen this first hand. E.g. tenants with a terrible credit score, but 36mo of proof on-time rent payments. They've always made their future payments (in my experience).
Is having your payments reported to a credit bureau really a benefit to you to allow you to have a better credit or is it a collection activity intended to help the creditor collect?
The reason buy now pay it later is being added, is because those lenders are having trouble collecting, so they want to add it to the credit score so there is an additional consequence if they don’t get paid. It’s a collection activity, not something that’s designed to help the payor.
Adding rent is mostly a benefit to the landlord not to the poor people.
The shitty software my landlord used to use -- the Buildium / Realpage scum -- decided to put a popup on every rent payment trying to get me to pay the Realpage scum $5 to $10 to report the rent payment to the credit bureaus.
Just what we need, every sleazebag landlord who owns 3 apartments and thinks he's hot shit holding his ability to fuck your credit up over your head.
Landlords like the idea of incorporating rent payments into credit scores, since it adds extra incentive to pay on time. Or, phrased differently, extra punishment for failing to pay on time.
Framing the current default as a help to the rentier class is just silly.
The rentier class are indeed a major cause of stagnation and inequality in our economy, but they are innocent of this one.