Two Proptech Companies Partner on Flexible Payments for Renters

Two proptech companies have partnered to integrate their products and enable flexible payments for tenants, an interesting niche when inflation and a slowing economy could act as a set of pincers to bite many renters.

Letus (formerly RentMoola), announced that it was partnering with MRI Software. The former’s product—self-described as a “cloud platform offering flexible rent payments with credit reporting”—is integrated with both MRI Living residential management suite and MRI @Work commercial management suite.

The former is designed for multifamily managers and residents “to help multifamily property managers own each stage of the resident lifecycle in their real estate business” by increasing efficiency by automating back-office processes.

The latter can “enable real estate owners, operators, and investors to boost occupancy, mitigate risk, and maximize portfolio performance” when working with commercial tenants.

Some of the additional features the integration brings to MRI users are real-time transaction reconciliation, flexible payments, credit reporting to increase consumer credit scores (Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion will all add the information if they receive it), automated SMS messaging and payments, and auto scheduling synchronization of payments.

Letus enables rent payment through a variety of credit cards and bank drafts. There’s support for multiple leases and roommates. The company claims to have processed $2 billion across 2 million individual transactions, suggesting an average payment of $1,000.

There are other companies that are trying to automate, expedite, or enhance the rental payment process. RentRedi, for example, has an app that residential tenants can use to make payments, in addition to managing the lease signing process and other aspects of the tenant-landlord relationship.

Last year, Kairos announced a partnership with some large real estate owners to create a program called Bilt Rewards. Call it social motivation to keep up with rent. Tenants can earn rewards, like a frequent buyer program, by paying their rent, signing a lease, or referring other tenants. The tenants can redeem the reward points over 100 major airlines and hotels via transfers. There are also rent credits, fitness classes, and home décor available. The partner multifamily owners have a total of more than 2 million rental units.

Such developments suggest that business as usual in multifamily may be changing. Availability of housing is tight and hasn’t grown sufficiently with the country’s expanding population. However, skyrocketing costs of construction and rising interest rates mean many developers and investors must look for more upscale tenants who can afford the higher rents necessary for projects to reach financial viability. Such people are likely more demanding, and marketing additional services is a potential attraction.