Are You Always Paying the Rent? It Can Help With Your Mortgage Application.

“While credit history is a key element in assessing a borrower’s ability to make a mortgage payment, establishing credit in the United States is not a fair endeavor,” said Hugh Frater, CEO of Fannie Mae. a blog post.

So rent should count for one thing. But only 0.3 percent of the 80 million or so adults living in rental properties mention rent on their loan files, according to FICO, which uses data from credit reports to create scoring systems that are part of the mortgage underwriting process.

How can this be? I wanted to talk to three dominant offices – Equifax, Experian and TransUnion – about tenants. Equifax and TransUnion did not respond in any way, while Experian sent a statement instead of the interview. My request somehow ended up at their industry association even though I didn’t want to talk to anyone there, as is often the case when I asked what they were doing.

Francis CreightonHe also said he was annoyed by the fact that information on lease payments made up less than 1 percent of the data companies and others sent to the bureaus, according to FICO.

“It’s a really big problem,” he said. “We desperately want this information on file.”

However, for credit bureaus to get it, homeowners—including hundreds of thousands of people who own an apartment here or three there—would have to surrender.

“They have no incentive to do that,” he said. Laurie Goodman, vice president of housing finance policy at the Urban Institute. It’s only worth doing if everyone contributes, because then landlords can use this new data collection to screen tenants. And not everyone is contributing too much right now.

Given that the credit bureaus didn’t have the rental data Fannie Mae and others wanted so much, Fannie developed a somewhat sophisticated workaround that included a “desktop insurer” verification engine and orders for “assets verification.”