Real Estate Marketing & Beyond
Halifax-based big data software maker Zora has just launched a new product targeted at the real estate rental sector. The company claims its software, which is aimed at landlords, can help them to better screen tenants and reduce default rates by a massive fifty percent.
Zora's software works by analyzing data about prospective tenants, including their behavioral, demographic and social patterns, in order to predict if an individual is likely to be a reliable tenant in the long-term.
Milan Vrekic, co-founder and CEO of Zora, said landlords across the nation were losing more than $31 billion a year in unpaid rents, repairs and eviction fees that could be avoided.
“We have analyzed millions of data points to identify traits of good, long-term tenants and are now putting that data into the hands of landlords to protect them from such losses,” Vrekic said.
Zora's software is built on a proprietary tenant screening algorithm it calls the “Z Score”, which it says is a better alternative to traditional (FICO) credit scores, as the latter looks more at who is “financeable”, rather than who is reliable, explained Colin White, co-founder and CTO of Zora.
“We have conclusive evidence that landlords who rely solely on in-person interviews to screen tenants did as well as those who relied on credit scores," White said.
Zora's Z Score takes into account more than 80 risk factors when arriving at its total score for each prospective tenant, ranking them on a scale of 1 to 100.
Zora's platform goes further by helping landlords to manage their rentals too. It provides tools to streamline tasks such as lease signing, maintenance and rent collection. Check out Zora's website here for more details.
