The blog
Plain-English guides to phone lookups, credit scores, tenant and lead screening, and doing it all by the book.
66 articles
Most bad tenancies were visible on paper before the lease was signed. These are the 11 warning signs seasoned landlords look for, how to verify each one quickly, and the things that look alarming but usually aren't.
A text code proves someone has a phone in their hand right now. It doesn't prove whose phone it is or who's holding it. Here's what phone-based identity checks actually confirm, and how to cover the gaps.
Most walkaways start at the desk, when a buyer learns their payment after an hour on the lot. A soft-pull pre-qualification moves the credit conversation to the first five minutes, without dinging anyone's score.
You checked the app, saw a number you liked, then the lender came back lower. Nothing went wrong. The two numbers come from different formulas, and once you know which one a lender pulls, you can see it before you apply.
Net-30 is a loan with an invoice attached. Here's when a credit check is worth doing, what to look at for sole proprietors and small companies, how to turn a score into a credit limit, and the paperwork that keeps it clean.
Mobile, landline and VoIP numbers look identical on a form. They aren't. What each line type says about the person behind it, and why a VoIP result is a reason to look closer, not a reason to panic.
You can legally look up someone's credit score when the law gives you a reason to, and the simplest reason is their OK. Here's where the line sits, with real scenarios, the actual penalties, and how to get consent right.
No law sets a minimum credit score to rent. Each landlord picks their own bar, and most of them care more about how you've paid than about the exact number. Here's how it works from both sides of the application.
Your app says 724. The lender says 691. Nobody made a mistake. FICO and VantageScore read the same kind of data with different rules, and once you know where they split, the gap stops being a mystery.
Most loan leads arrive as a name and a phone number, and half the name is usually misspelled. Here's how lenders turn that phone number into a soft-pull pre-qualification, with the borrower's OK, before the first callback.
The name on your screen isn't sent by the caller. Your carrier looks it up in a database, and that record can be years old, cut to 15 characters, or missing. Here's how CNAM works and how much to trust it.
Your credit report is the record. Your credit score is one model's verdict on that record. Here's what's in each, why they disagree so often, and which one matters for the decision in front of you.
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