On-Site.com blogs

Thanks for stopping by in Vegas

Jake Harrington — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 17:57:20 -0700

Attendance was down 20% from the last time the National Apartment Association held its annual conference in Las Vegas, so we are extra thankful to everyone who made it to the show last month to say hi.

On-Site's sales and marketing team was proud to welcome new and old friends, and demonstrate our wide world of smart leasing products, including e-signatures!

We hope you'll stay connected and join us at our next event.

Three steps for green leasing

Jake Harrington — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 12:15:30 -0700

Whenever I see mention of the apartment business "going green," it has meant recycling programs, sustainable construction or eco-friendly gimmicks.

Green leasing is the easy way to do your part. How?

Advertise online and track performance
Don't lie about online applications; actually take them
Don't print. E-sign your documents

We have made it painless to go paperless. It's easy being green.

Leader in online leasing welcomes top sales producer

Jake Harrington — Sun, 31 May 2009 18:43:34 -0700

Kimberly Cameron eyes enormous potential for On-Site.com expansion in East coast apartment markets

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- On-Site.com, the top-rated screening and online leasing company for the apartment business, announced this month that Kimberly Cameron had joined as a regional sales director. She works out of the Washington D.C. office.

"Kimberly will have an immediate impact and I’m thrilled to be working with such a driven performer," said Josh Romoff, On-Site’s National Sales Director. "She is one of the most impressive professionals in the business."

Kimberly will focus on building relationships with apartment owners and operators in key markets including New York, Chicago and Washington D.C. and le ading the expansion of On-Site’s presence east of the Mississippi. On-Site delivers an award-winning collection of services to attract, qualify and lease to residents such as specialized resident screening, document management, e-signatures and online advertising distribution.

Kimberly has a record-setting history in the multifamily industry, having served in leadership roles at both suppliers and operators. Prior to joining On-Site, she had been ranked #1 nationally as an account executive at For Rent Media Solutions, was a five-time winner of that print and online advertising company’s "President’s Club" for top sales achievements and successfully launched four publications in West coast markets.

She was previously a top producer at The Apartment Guide out of Washington state, where she consistently ranked in the top 1% nationally and was the fastest winner of the "Top Producer" award in company history.

Kimberly’s duties at both advertisers focused on increasing market share through new sales and customer service. She had the highest selling revenue in the country for nine years straight. Prior to entering the advertising business in 1999, Kimberly directed associate development at Trammell Crow Residential Services in Dallas, where she developed a national marketing program and recruited and trained new hires in four southwestern markets.

Before relocating to the D.C. area, Kimberly covered the Pacific Northwest, where Silicon Valley-based On-Site enjoys a large market share.

"On-Site is very customer service driven, and that’s one quality that drew me to this opportunity," Kimberly said. "I have worked in multifamily since age 18, and On-Site has a reputation of leadership and innovation. On-Site has grown so popular, but there is still enormous potential for growth."

"On-Site is the best screening company bar none,” said Lynn Owen, Principal at Seattle-based Glacier Real Estate Services, who has worked with Kimberly for a decade. "For Kimberly to leave a position where she was adored to move across the country to develop and sell for On-Site says more to her clients than any advertising ever could."

About On-Site.com

Smarter leasing starts here. With On-Site, it’s simple to attract, qualify and lease to the right residents. Our integrated, patented solution ensures quality control from lead to lease, and everything in between: online applications, resident screening, document management and e-signatures, Ad Blast™ community marketing, resident services and integration with your accounting system.

Founded in 2001 in Silicon Valley, On-Site maintains regional offices in New York, San Francisco Bay Area, Atlanta, Washington D.C., Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, Seattle and Atlantic City. An active member in national and local apartment organizations including NAA, NMHC and IREM, Multi-Housing News selected On-Site as a finalist for its First Annual Green Initiative Award and its readership voted On-Site as Top Resident Screening System in the Technology Choice Awards in 2007 and 2008.

Contact

Amy Maley at (650) 934-4151

Get out the vote!

Jake Harrington — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 18:06:44 -0700

We promise: we won't ask Congress for a bailout if you vote for us.

But seriously, we work to earn your business everyday. Thanks for supporting On-Site.com as the top Resident Screening System in this year's Tech Choice Awards.

It would be a privilege to serve you for another term.

Year of the Groundhog

Jake Harrington — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 16:21:20 -0800

As the new appointed Blogger for the National Apartment Association, I kicked things off by channeling Punxsutawney Phil:

This season, it doesn’t take a groundhog to tell a landlord that the housing market is in for a long winter.

Failing banks are old news, I write, but the fallout on consumer credit is getting scary:

American Express will cut you off for shopping at the Dollar Store
Banks are ruining your FICO credit score even when you pay on time
… While cheaters still just buy a better score

And this just in:

When it comes to the changing rules of credit, even the wealthy aren't safe!

The bottom line:

it’s vital for landlords, as users of credit information, to understand what goes into the "score" – it’s often not what you think.

Times like these call for screening results you can understand and trust.

Craigslist is far from free...

Jake Harrington — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 20:58:27 -0800

... and why On-Site's Ad Blast™ makes sense for your portfolio.

Consider:

Time you spend posting is expensive
Most auto-posting services are a hassle (we're different!)
Craigslist leads are overrated anyway

Lisa Trosien, multifamily speaker and blogger, spells out why she's had it with Craigslist enthusiasts. This goes to show why you should leave it to us to get you noticed online.

Sign of the times: Steep decline in renter quality

Jake Harrington — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 13:57:14 -0800

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

One third more active renters in last six months have faced eviction

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -– Landlords using On-Site.com to qualify new renters have seen a marked increase in applicants with serious problems paying the rent. In the last 3 months, compared to the year prior, 31.8 percent more applicants to rental housing screened by On-Site had been evicted or left a landlord owing money. And preliminary figures from 2009 paint an even bleaker picture.

As the depths of the nation’s economic crisis become clear, the quality of applicants to rental apartments showed a sharp decline in the third and fourth quarters of 2008, On-Site’s figures say. On-Site.com, one of the largest resident-screening services in the country, evaluates renters before they lease an apartment; industry statistics suggest that over half of renters with an eviction record will be evicted again in the future.

On-Site’s figures, which report nationally on more than 100,000 applications per month, show that in the last six months of 2008, the number of rental housing applicants with a serious landlord delinquency on file shot up dramatically — an increase of 22.9% and 31.8% in Q3 and Q4, respectively, compared to the same quarters from 2007.

These figures focus solely on rental-housing default and do not consider applicants with mortgage foreclosures on file. While the number of applicants with serious mortgage delinquencies has been on the rise, On-Site’s figures suggest that job losses and a slumping economy — not a mass exodus from homeownership — is driving the trend.

"In the winter months we traditionally see a lower overall quality of renter, relative to the rest of the year," noted Jake Harrington, On-Site’s director of business development. "So we compared to a snapshot of the year prior. It’s an unprecedented surge in red-flag behavior."

Landlords utilize resident screening services to evaluate whether they should accept or reject applicants based on public records, credit history and other factors. To evaluate a consumer’s credentials, On-Site typically investigates a consumer’s credit profile and criminal record, as well as a check of landlord/tenant court records from housing courts across the country. The screening system weighs these factors against an apartment community’s risk threshold to determine the recommendation to rent, decline or rent with certain conditions like an increased security deposit.

Multifamily default and eviction information is distinct from the credit scores sold by the credit bureaus, which were developed primarily for use by banks and lenders to determine a consumer’s "creditworthiness," and have never been a perfect fit for screening tenants. Harrington says that it is rental housing performance, and not a credit score, that is most relevant to landlords.

"The most important piece of the puzzle is how the resident has performed on his previous lease," said Harrington. "This information is also the most difficult to access." In addition to records obtained directly from county housing courts, On-Site’s reports incorporate scorecards and reference calls from landlords, debt collections and money judgments initiated by property managers and rental-payment history from RentBureau, a credit bureau specializing in the multifamily industry.

"Resident quality trends are our in-house 'economic indicator' and it certainly paints the picture of a distressed pool of renters." Harrington noted, adding that January’s numbers are on track for an even sharper increase in screenings with negative rental information – with 48 percent more screenings with landlord delinquencies compared to a year ago.

"With a surge in active renters out there with this sort of severe problem in their recent past, it is more important than ever for landlords to conduct a thorough review of their credentials. A credit score doesn’t cut it."

Go green with our award-winning e-forms

Jake Harrington — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 22:13:35 -0800

We are proud to be named a finalist in the Multi-Housing News First Annual Green Initiatives Awards.

Our online document generation, printing and archiving now includes e-signatures to promote a paperless office. Online document management with On-Site provides reliable, secure quality control to digitally save every shred of paper apartment managers and residents use, and is a perfect complement to our online leasing system.

We make paperless painless!

Check out the the winners list of companies going green, which includes such multifamily giants as:

We applaud these forward-thinking initiatives, and urge our industry colleagues to embrace this important movement. With On-Site, it's easy being green!

Craigslist 101: How NOT to write online ads

Jake Harrington — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 16:37:52 -0700

Everyone knows about Craigslist, but not everyone knows how to use it well. Case in point: some really bad "for rent" ads.

Remember, our Rental Address service:

automatically posts your communities to thousands of websites (including Craigslist)
directs visitors to your website (we can build you a beautiful one)
allows future residents to apply online and even pay rent

Take control of your leads and turn them into leases - let us handle your online image. We promise to take it easy with the ALL CAPS.

New law coming Nov. 1 – what landlords need to know

Jake Harrington — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 18:50:25 -0700

If you use credit reports, you should get to know the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA).

On November 1st of this year, get ready for the new FCRA rule on address discrepancies to go into effect.

The good news

If you use On-Site, compliance is easy.

The new law applies mostly to financial institutions and creditors, but the act covers anyone that uses consumer reports – including landlords and property management companies.

What is the law?

The purpose of this new requirement is to protect your applicant from having erroneous information used against him or her. We need to work together to ensure that you have obtained the correct screening report for the applicant who has applied.

The rule, embodied in section 605(h) of the act, states:

"If… the request includes an address for the consumer that substantially differs from the addresses in the file of the consumer… the consumer reporting agency shall notify the requester of the existence of the discrepancy."

Your On-Site screening reports already contain warnings (including address discrepancies) that the information provided by the renter may be fraudulent. In light of the new law, we have added ACTION REQUIRED to the warning and now include a link to this bulletin.

According to the FTC, if there is an address discrepancy, the user of the consumer reports – that's you, the landlord or management company – must:

"develop and implement reasonable policies and procedures designed to enable the user to form a reasonable belief that a consumer report relates to the consumer about whom it has requested the report."

In plain English...

If an applicant gives you a current address that generates a warning from our site, we’ve added the reminder that the law now says you must verify that the address belongs to your applicant.

What steps should you take?

If you get an address discrepancy warning, we suggest that you take any of these steps:

Ask your applicant if the rest of the screening report information pertains to them
Cross-check the addresses returned on the report with those your applicant provided
Double-check that you have entered the information accurately
Cross-check the accounts on the screening report with materials submitted by the applicant

You can use information from the applicant or third-party sources to verify that the screening report matches the renter.

What if the screening report contains information that doesn’t match, or the applicant disputes the report?

It happens, and we’re here to help. Our dedicated Renter Relations group handles these discrepancies, and can correct errors on our screening reports in real time.

What if I can’t view the report details?

For users that view a "recommendation to rent" but not the full credit report (including the addresses on file), we suggest that you switch to a view that includes address/identity information; your corporate office can make this change for you.

We recommend that you print this bulletin or otherwise make your users aware of this new FCRA requirement.

The rule takes effect November 1, 2008. You may also view a full copy of the rule.