As the Rent Bureau of Canada’s database expanded and accumulated an ever-growing store of verified rental history data, Dobrowolski and his team recognized yet another opportunity to go beyond mere record-keeping and searching.
With thousands of landlord–tenant cases, millions of payment histories and rental records available for analysis, the next logical step was to concisely quantify tenancy patterns. The result was one of Rentcheck’s key innovations—RentScore®, a rating system that provides a comprehensive numerical overview of a tenant’s leasing history. Rather than focusing on specific incidents, such as evictions or late payments, RentScore was designed to offer a broad assessment of an individual’s behaviour throughout their rental history.
RentScore® evaluates 13 core housing-related events, including essential indicators such as rent payment patterns, tenancy duration and stability, lease compliance, and other factors which demonstrate a tenant’s level of responsibility in managing their rental obligations.
By analysing these events collectively, the system generates a numerical score ranging from 0 – 1000; the higher their RentScore®, the better a tenant’s performance. A RentScore® is generated similarly to a Credit Score, but specifically evaluates a tenant’s rental behaviour, rather than their overall financial history.
While credit scores provide important insights into someone’s financial habits (such as credit card use or loan repayments), they often contain very limited information about their behaviour as a renter.
This limitation had always posed a significant information gap for landlords in screening their applicants, as well as creating barriers for some prospective tenants. Many individuals with sparse credit records or low credit scores who consistently paid their rent on time were being rejected by landlords who had no access to their positive tenancy backgrounds. Conversely, individuals with strong credit profiles could still be problem tenants when it came to rent arrears or lease violations.
But RentScore filled the gap by making “tenantworthiness” as a measurable criterion. Instead of judging applicants solely on their creditworthiness, it numerically captures how well individuals perform in the rental housing environment.
Rent Bureau of Canada® research has shown that poor credit scores can coexist with excellent rental histories. In many cases, responsible tenants were being unfairly rejected simply because their credit profiles did not include their consistent record of meeting rental obligations. But RentScore® allowed housing providers to combine traditional credit reports with verified rental history details, thus gaining a more comprehensive picture of an applicant’s true reliability.
RentScore® quickly became a key component of the Rentcheck® reporting model. By transforming raw rental data into a standardized score, the system formalizes tenant history reporting, reinforcing the idea that housing behaviour, like credit behaviour, can be measured and analysed.
