Tenant Profiling using social media

Tenant Profiling using social media

13:46 PM, 26th May 2016, About 8 years ago 6

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New software used by Tenant Assured is said to be able to profile prospective tenants, by using the social media platform of their choice, to assist landlords and agents select applicants. It is also supposed to be able to help ‘check up’ on tenants during the term of the tenancy.Big brother

Obviously only with an individuals express consent and by using Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc. there are five main personality traits deemed important to landlords to understand about their tenants that the system will assess:

  • Extraversion
  • Neuroticism
  • Openness
  • Agreeableness
  • Conscientiousness

Using social media accounts will alert users to changes or patterns in a tenants life such as traveling, relationships and employment status.

It would be difficult to see people volunteering to permit this level of personal intrusion without feeling like they had no other option to secure a suitable home.

Ben Stubbs, MD of Score Assured, said “We can help landlords determine the potential problem tenants and help the good ones secure the property they really want.”

“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.”


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Comments

Neil Patterson

13:48 PM, 26th May 2016, About 8 years ago

I have heard of similar systems being considered for mortgage and unsecured lending too

Mandy Thomson

10:48 AM, 27th May 2016, About 8 years ago

The concept behind sentiment reading (of text) isn't new. Several companies and developers have come up with software that analyzes the emotion of the writer of any kind of web article or uploaded text.

There's a good example here: http://www.meaningcloud.com/demo# You can try it by copying and pasting any text and clicking "send".

As for the data protection question, as this is simply analyzing something that is already in the public domain, I don't understand how consent is required. Anyone can take anything published online and analyze it as I've indicated above, without knowing the first thing about the writer of the statement, let alone getting their permission.

I agree that the internet is a really valuable tool to check out potential tenants, employees, dates etc but only as an adjunct to traditional methods and due diligence.

When I was recently looking for a new tenant, I found that, contrary to popular belief, not everyone is on social media, and most certainly not every social media site.

I would be interested to know if the tool mentioned can cross check across the internet for a given individual and pull posts/articles they might have published on more obscure sites? If it can, then it's clearly adding something unique and valuable, but if it's simply reading given texts for certain keywords, characters, phrases etc, you can do that yourself very easily for free.

Stuart

10:52 AM, 27th May 2016, About 8 years ago

Interesting...

Without permission you can "profile" already using FB EdgeRank/Open Graph.

As well as more traditional ways to "screen" potential tenants, forward thinking landlords can utilise FB algo's and profile future tenants using a plethre of demographic targeting options.

Facebook deliberately restricts the reach and exposure your "free" posts generate they're now a pay to play platform (as they want to encourage you to pay for a greater reach with "boost posts" and "FB ads" to expand their considerable coffers)

One way that has worked for me personally since "profiling" this way is to utilise FB Ads to send potential tenants to a landing page advertising my property(s) thus drastically reducing my due diligence process.

On your landing page you can then expand on your property features, management, market other properties in same area etc whatever you want.

One of the massive pluses on this is that you can then use FB retargetting pixel to build a virtual list of people who you know are interested in a certain property and are looking to rent in that area. So next time you have a tenant moving out you can then re-market to this list in advance and drastically reduce the lead cost or CPA.

Continue to add people into your rental funnel using this process and you have a ready made list of potential renters you can put your add in front of.

Using specific demographics like radius of where your house, working, age, sex, earnings per year, no children, credit card etc can really target down your ideal avatar and take a lot of the risk out of finding new tenants 🙂

Im NOT suggesting this is to replace your normal due diligence process but assist. One to One chats are still compulsory in my screening process but the above method does eliminate a large % of the time wasters and potential tenants that would not be a good fit.

Michael Barnes

23:22 PM, 28th May 2016, About 8 years ago

Reply to the comment left by "Mandy Thomson" at "27/05/2016 - 10:48":

I'm with you on the data protection issue.

Major John

12:24 PM, 29th May 2016, About 8 years ago

Reply to the comment left by "Stuart " at "27/05/2016 - 10:52":

Stuart - it seems you're pretty familiar with the practicalities of doing this. Might you be able to share any resources to help people learn, and/or PM me with some pointers?

Stuart

8:05 AM, 30th May 2016, About 8 years ago

Reply to the comment left by "Major John" at "29/05/2016 - 12:24":

Hi Major John.

I don't know your starting point, if you're a complete beginner to digital marketing a great resource is to start from podcast 1 over here.

http://www.digitalmarketer.com/podcast/page/5/

They are FB targeting potential customers into their funnel but the principles are sound and should give you a great grounding in the methods I discuss in my post.

I don't believe Property118 let you PM or else I would of 🙂

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