More Tenants Can Now Add Rent Payments to Their Credit Score

About a third of American households rent, yet in most cases their credit score doesn’t reflect their on-time payments.

That’s beginning to change. Renters can increasingly choose to have their timely monthly payments reported to the credit bureaus, with the goal of improving their credit profile to qualify for loans.

A bevy of third-party services now offer consumers the option of having their on-time rent payments reported to one or more credit bureaus. The bureaus — Equifax, Experian and TransUnion — can add rent payments to loan data to enhance the credit reports and credit scores that lenders use to evaluate potential borrowers.

The services typically report only on-time payments, but consumer experts recommend checking the details first. The reporting of late payments, such as when tenants withhold rent to protest their living conditions, may be a drawback to enrolling, consumer experts say.

Zillow, the real estate website, became the latest entrant in the rent-reporting market this month. Some options, like Zillow’s, are available to renters whose landlords or property managers use the company’s rental management system to process payments. Others, like the service offered by Self Financial, are available directly to renters.

As it stands, few landlords routinely report rent payments to credit bureaus. Traditionally, only lenders have reported to the bureaus, and rent isn’t considered a loan. Fewer than 5 percent of the roughly 80 million adults who live in rental housing had rental data in their credit files, and it was mostly negative data from missed payments, according to the Urban Institute, a nonprofit research group focused on advancing upward mobility and equity. (Negative rent information can end up in credit files if a landlord reports delinquent accounts or sends them to a collection agency.)