Cutting-edge technology could be about to greatly assist letting agents and landlords throughout the buy-to-let process.
Tenant Assured utilises automated social profiling technology that assesses tenants’ social media accounts to surmise personality traits. This will allow landlords and agents to chose tenants and check up on their behaviour during tenancies.
Suitable tenants
Before the technology can be used, the tenant must give their consent on which social media profiles can be accessed. Tenant Assured hopes that this profiling can go hand-in-hand with traditional checks conducted before a tenancy agreement, such as referencing and credit checks.
Should a tenant agree to the profiling check, Tenant Assured aims to give an insight into five key personality traits that could affect the potential relationship:
- extraversion
- neuroticism
- openness
- agreeableness
- conscientiousness
Technology to check tenants’ social media profiles
Checking patterns
In addition, the profiling system gives information which could be of interest to agents and landlords throughout the tenancy.
Checking tenants’ social media accounts will pick up on their travel patterns and assess if they are spending substantial amounts of time away from the property. It will also pick up factors like a change of job or relationship status, which could affect their rental future.
Ben Stubbs, managing director of Score Assured, parent company of Tenant Assured, said, ‘we can help landlords determine the potential problem tenants and help the good ones secure the property they really want.’[1]
‘The insights we are able to collect with the consent of the tenant will protect landlords from costs involved in collecting rent arrears, evictions or repairing damage to their property. Currently, landlords rely on third parties to pull together traditional checks. Our product can add another layer of security to this by helping landlords get to know their prospective tenants so much better,’ Stubbs added.[1]
[1] https://www.lettingagenttoday.co.uk/breaking-news/2016/5/digital-dna-to-help-agents-and-landlords-check-up-on-tenants