Marketing Managers
E41: Reducing Investment Risks in Property Management
"Our focus and the way that we've taken a different approach is that instead of providing other property management tools or just another tenant screening tool, we said, 'Hey, what can we do to actually take away that risk of tenant delinquency for the landlord?'" — Viler Lika
During his time in consumer credit risk, Viler Lika started thinking about renter creditworthiness and how it impacts rental properties. In 2017 he founded SingleKey, the mission of which is to remove the common headaches of renting, and provide risk management for landlords. A major pain point for any landlord or property manager is a delinquent tenant, and while these bad tenants can cause huge issues for landlords, the occasional bad apple tenant provides a good insurance use case for a company like SingleKey.
Tune in to find out how SingleKey works (for landlords of all types), who underwrites their Rent Guarantee insurance, and how it is being used to address vacancy issues. Viler breaks down the costs of a delinquent tenant, and how SingleKey provides support for both the tenant and landlord. We hear about the worst-case scenarios for property owners, and how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the Canadian rental market.Tune in to find out about the latest tool being released by SingleKey (an automated rental collection tool), and how SingleKey has maintained such a stellar 4.9-star rating on Google Reviews. Press play to find out more!
Key points from this episode:
- Welcome to today's guest, Viler Lika, founder and CEO of SingleKey
- Vila's transition from engineering to finance and where the idea of SingleKey came from
- How SingleKey helps landlords through tenant screening and evictions
- Making SingleKey easy to use for landlords of all ages
- The cost of an eviction: more than just missed rent
- Why the occasional bad tenant is bad for the small-time landlord but is a good insurance use case
- The impact of COVID-19 on the rental property market in Canada
- How SingleKey is addressing the vacancy problem
- The underwriting underlying SingleKey and why it works as a company
- Playing a mediator role between landlord and tenant: how SingleKey helps both parties
- Hear about the worst-case scenarios Viler has seen
- Why SingleKey is different from other property management and tenant screening tools: taking away the risk of tenant delinquency
- How SingleKey has garnered over 400 Google Reviews with a 4.9-star rating
- Find out about the launch of SingleKey's new automated rent collection tool
- The benefits of the automated rent collection tool: from credit history to tenant ratings
Links mentioned in today's episode:
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Episode Transcript
"That now makes a vacancy problem that we have even worse because you have landlords that might have a basement that he can rent out or that spare unit, right? But they're choosing not to because of the risk in the market when it comes to tenant delinquency."
[0:00:37.1] NS: Welcome back to Sync or Swim. I'm your host, Nicolina Savelli and on this podcast, I take a tactical approach to helping those in multi-family, reach more renters and maximize their rental income. Today, I have the founder and CEO of SingleKey With me, Viler Lika, here to talk about the residential leasing process and how landlords and property managers can better manage the risk involved. Welcome to the show.
[0:01:01.1] VL: Thanks for having me, Nicolina, this is exciting.
[0:01:03.1] NS: Yeah, I'm so glad to have you here, I know it was last minute but glad you made time for us today and before we get into the conversation, I'd love for you to please share with our listeners a little bit about your professional background and really, the origin story behind SingleKey if you can?
[0:01:19.2] VL: Yeah, absolutely. I started my career as an actual engineer and I did that for a few years, more recently, about five, six years ago, I did an MBA and transitioned to the finance side of things and spent about five years in consumer credit risk. Capital One, TD Bank, really kind of dealing with lending, credit worthiness and that's really where the idea for SingleKey came up. We were really exploring the space this space as an opportunity of the bank to figure out, "Hey, how do we kind of get involved in the rental industry?" given that it's such a huge component, you know?
You're looking at somebody, you're looking at how much money your tenants are spending on a monthly basis, the biggest part of their income will go, 30% of their income will go towards paying your rent and currently it's done very informally, right? It is typically a check written to your landlord or E-transfer out there and unlike every other purchase you make in your life, there is no financing behind it, no insurance, nothing really that we can leverage.
As we explore this space, we figured out, "Hey, we'd have to provide some value to the landlord because they are the ones that really control that relationships" they have the — they are the key stakeholder and after many interviews with landlords, we realized that there's a lot of challenges when it comes to being a landlord and in the rental process in general but what stood out to us, the number one pain point that everybody experienced was the one thing they couldn't control and that was the tenant, right?
[0:02:39.8] NS: Yeah.
[0:02:40.0] VL: You know, everybody, they were worried about tenants that would prove to be difficult to manage, that would cause headaches, tenants that wouldn't pay the rent or damage of property and you know, concerns about protecting their investment and making sure that they were getting a return on it, and able to kind of cover the expenses. That was the number one concern.
That's how we basically came up with the idea for SingleKey and the rent guarantee program and the entire mission of our company is really, how do we take the stress, the worry, the risk out of landlords when it comes to managing their rental property?
[0:03:09.0] NS: Absolutely. I mean, I've brought up, I am a very small-time landlord. Basically, mortgage hacking with my basement renting on my basement and I've had friends, I've had my brother and it's kind of surprising what people kind of — you think you can trust them, I can only imagine how much risk is involved with people who are managing more than one renter.
It's a tremendous amount of stress, a tremendous amount of risk. It's a very important point and let's get kind of right into the conversation. Improving the tenant application process and helping landlords find the right tenants while mitigating the risk they take with every lease they sign. Now, I want to walk through the journey landlords usually take with your products, starting with tenant screening and background checks. How does your product differ from other tenant screening tools out there?
[0:04:04.2] VL: Right, this is the first step because you can actually reduce a lot of your risk out front by just making your proper due diligence when it comes to selecting the right tenants to lease out your property to. It is a very important part of it and it's something that lenders are trying to take more seriously now. You know, you go back 10 years ago, most people didn't even bother with credit checks. They would always just kind of make a judgment call or a good call on the tenant after they met them.
Now, it's getting a bit more sophisticated, which is great and we're proud to say that we have one of the most comprehensive tenant screening solutions out there in the market right now to provide the landlord with all the data that they need to make a huge decision on that tenant. If you're looking at tenant credit and background check, it's not just a credit report. We run a full Equifax credit report. We include all the trade lines, all the deadline items, bankruptcies and all the other financial items that determine their financial health. We go beyond that, we also include criminal record searches, social media scans. In Ontario, we even run an eviction search, so we can tell if you've been evicted in the last 12 months.
[0:05:01.0] NS: Wow.
[0:05:01.1] VL: You can leave, absolutely. It is a bit more tailored towards the rental case as supposed to just in general credit report.
[0:05:08.2] NS: Right.
[0:05:09.6] VL: Now, in addition to what else sets us apart, you know, we've really focused on making this tool a very easy to use. We do deal with some older clients, landlords typically are in that 35 to 55 age range so we want something that's super easy to use, three clicks and you're done. You're able to actually go online and to our website and get a report under five minutes, all self-serve without having to make a call to us. That's been a big differentiator and part of our success and then lastly, it's not just a report, we've actually added a lot of tech features to help you automate a lot of the common tasks that come along with renting.
For example, we've got a pre-screening tool that you can use, it's basically a questionnaire that you can customize and send a link to your tenants when they're interested in applying for your rental. When you get those 40 or 50 leads that want to come in for viewing, you can ask a few questions in terms of, "Hey, you know, how many people are moving in, when are you guys planning to move in, do you have a job, do you have any pets, what's the car situation?" You can actually at least kind of make sure they're a good fit before you proceed with them.
That's kind of like the first step in terms of kind of just weeding out the applicants. After that, you hold your viewing, you have a couple of people in mind you like, then you proceed to a round of tenant screening, our report and as part of the report, we also run auto reference checks. We'll have an online rental application form that you invite your tenant to, they'll provide all their information, they'll give you the consent around the credit check.
They'll also put in the previous landlord's references, their employer's references, they can upload pay stubs, employment letters, et cetera. And as part of that form, as soon as we get the landlord's information, we'll send a quick referencing check to the previous landlord to ask about their experience with the tenant.
[0:06:44.1] NS: Okay, that's important.
[0:06:46.2] VL: Exactly and that piece is another, when the report is ready, we have the property information, we have the tenant's information, we have his landlord's info. We have most of the info we need to actually fill your lease agreements. We have an export button where you can actually draft your Ontario center lease agreement with all the information about the tenant of the property and the landlord to help you kind of get started if you find one of this at least.
[0:07:06.1] NS: Yeah, that helps leasing agents just move that process along as quickly as possible after all this information has been already gathered, right? I mean, you've done all of this due diligence, you're trying to select the right tenant but then things happen and people default on payments and you need to evict them after maybe a few months of having to deal with that or I'm not sure what the regulations are with how long you take or what landlords are doing right now but I see you provide and eviction calculator on your website, which is extremely helpful but I was kind of startled to see the fees associated with evictions.
[0:07:45.1] VL: Yeah.
[0:07:46.1] NS: Can you tell me a little bit about those fees and maybe explain why they differ between provinces and any advice you have for landlords that are looking to evict?
[0:07:54.1] VL: Yeah, absolutely. Our services are offered in provinces now, our reports are across Canada, our rent guarantee is offered in every province with the exception of Quebec. So we've gathered a lot of knowledge and data in terms of kind of what the typical eviction process looks like in every province and we have one of our, Don is one of our legal team members actually conducted analysis and really kind of nail down, "Hey, what is the typical process? How long is a typical eviction process in every province and what are each of the steps that you need to take? What are the fees associated with that?", and really kind of put together an analysis around that, which we found very helpful.
Typically, when it comes to just legal fees, you're looking at typically paying for paralegal if you don't want to do it yourself and that's something that we recommend. In additional, there will be court filing fees for the eviction, you'll also have to pay a share if you go out there and actually, you know, you get to get the tenant out. On average in most provinces, that ends up totalling up to about $1,500 when it's all said and done. Now, that's probably one of your smallest expenses when it comes to the eviction part, right? The biggest challenge is that in most provinces, it will take about three or four months on average to get the tenant out, right? That's kind of like, business as usual, pre-COVID, there's no backlog.
[0:09:05.2] NS: Yeah.
[0:09:07.1] VL: I mean, it can differ a bit and depending on what province you're in. Ontario is famously one of the harder ones.
[0:09:11.2] NS: Of course.
[0:09:13.1] VL: Right? Whereas, you know, some of the — in Alberta for example, it is quite a bit easier to get tenants out. That eviction time could probably be about half as lengthy.
[0:09:20.2] NS: Is it because of the supply available in these other provinces so they can find other accommodations faster? Is that the biggest concern?
[0:09:29.1] VL: I can't really comment on that. I think it is more policy issue in terms of how the regulations are setup around that and I am sure the rental market or the housing market in general probably plays a factor in that as well. Then lastly, in additional to legal fees and loss rent, you're also looking at perhaps incurring some damages. Typically, when you have a fallout with your tenant and they're not paying the rent, you're probably not on the best terms.
It's not unusual to take it out on the property. Based on analysis, we saw that about one in six eviction claims, typically will include the damage claim as well, which is about $3,500 on average as well. You tell me all of that happened, now you're looking at about 10 or $15,000 of losses in general for dealing with an eviction and even more depending on what the rent is on the property.
Our recommendation is always, you know, (especially if you're a smaller landlord, you don't have the experience and the know-how), is definitely reach out to paralegal in your province for advice to diminish the delinquency. We rely on our network of partners and paralegals in each province that we work with to run our rent guarantee program and we're happy to refer you to one of our specialists if you need help.
[0:10:34.1] NS: Perfect, yeah. This obviously leads me to this rent guarantee solution, which basically protects landlords and property managers when a tenant stops paying their rent. Now, what was the impetus for this product? What made you think of this? Obviously, you've kind of talked about your career and what has made you kind of focused on this, but what was really the highlight there for creating this product?
[0:10:57.2] VL: Yeah, that's a great question. You know, we looked at this use case and we thought, "Hey, this is a perfect insurance use case" right? Where something that doesn't happen very often, not every tenant out there is delinquent obviously, there's a few bad apples here and there. The problem is that if you're the unlucky landlord that came across that tenant and you're suffering through that delinquency and eviction process, it's a big shock in terms of both financial and stress, right?
You're going to incur as we spoke before, you can incur about 10 or $15,000 of losses in terms of loss, right? Damages, et cetera, but you have to figure out and know how to go through that eviction process and hire paralegal and really kind of understand that. We said, "Well, why don't we just basically offer a product where we basically provide a rent guarantee insurance" right? Where, if you're the unlucky person that month that needs us, well, we'll be there for you to kind of guarantee the rent, cover damage to the property, take care of the legal eviction process for you and cover the legal fees there.
It's especially important if you are smaller guy, you're relying on — like yourself, Nicole, you're relying on that rental income to cover your property expenses, cover the mortgage payments. The average independent landlord out there, only has about two or three properties on average. They don't have a huge portfolio of properties to be able to spread their losses. When it happens to you, you're really put in a difficult position because now you have to cover two or three mortgages, that puts in a really kind of difficult position. On top of that, it's also very stressful experience just to go through the eviction process because you know, you don't have the staff in place. You don't have the property manager or the superintendent…
[0:12:27.1] NS: Absolutely.
[0:12:29.0] VL: To deal with all of these so it all falls on you.
[0:12:30.2] NS: Even if you do, you're still digging into your bottom line, there's still an issue with the bottom line even if you have a thousand doors. It's something you want to avoid and want to mitigate any risk that you can in taking on because it's just — I do bring this up a little bit later but the cost of rent is going up and that is just going to be an issue whether or not it's a bad renter or a good renter, it's not even a question of that. It's just the economy and where we're headed and whether or not people are going to have the financial means to make their rent payments on time so there's also that.
[0:13:48.1] VL: Let's talk a bit about that because that's important as well, right? We're looking at the macro-economic environment. I mean, COVID was a huge shock to every industry but especially this one. You know, you're talking about like the rental market, it was a perfect storm, right?
You had people fleeing the cities, you have vacancies going up, your rent price is going down, you had a bit kind of a readjustment in the economy as well as a lot of people got furloughed and have to figure out kind of what to do and you had eviction bans in a lot of jurisdictions, right? Where you know, it wasn't unusual to go six months without being able to actually apply for an eviction order.
We saw a lot of landlords go six to 12 months without getting any rent payment and you know, a very difficult position. You know, we've had calls from landlords that were forced to sell their property because they couldn't carry the debt or service the mortgage payments and that is not easy either right, because nobody wants to buy a property where there is a delinquent tenant in there.
[0:14:34.2] NS: Of course.
[0:14:36.1] VL: You kind of have — when you're selling the property. So it puts them in a really bad spot. On the other hand, we also have a lot of landlords that were just leaving their units empty because out of concern of tenants taking advantage and not wanting to pay the rent, right? Because they knew they will get evicted. That now makes the vacancy problem that we have now even worse because you have landlords that might have that basement that you can rent out or that spare unit, right? But they are choosing not to because of the risk in the market.
No one likes to have tenant delinquency, so we're hoping that having a product like this where you pay 5% of the rents to our rent guarantee program but we completely take away the risk of tenant default. We really encourage a lot of people to basically perhaps if that is what's holding you back from renting your property and adding more supply to the market, which we desperately need now, I am hoping that that will encourage some people to really jump in as landlords.
[0:15:22.1] NS: That is a very, very important point and I can completely see where that — I mean, like I said, I did not rent my basement anymore because of the issues that I've seen that of course, that is just one unit of supply that could be helping the market but because I don't want to deal with the risk, I won't and so I can only imagine that that's happening with other people everywhere across Canada and that is impacting supply so that's a very good point.
[0:15:52.0] VL: Absolutely.
[0:15:53.0] NS: Now, I don't know if you can do this but could you walk me through how you're actually able to provide this type of insurance? Maybe share your experiences of how you've seen it protect any landlords so far.
[0:16:04.1] VL: Yeah, that's a good question and you know, SingleKey, as you guys know is a fairly recent new company. We started this business in 2017, we've been had it for about four years but we are still a new business growing rapidly especially during this time of a high-risk environment. Now with that being said, we don't take on the risk ourselves, right? You know, the rent guarantee, we're liable for 12 months of rent payments, damages, legal fees.
It is a lot of risk we have to carry on behalf of the landlords, so to be able to actually support that risk, we are reinsured through Deloitte's reinsurance market. We have a large insurance company behind us to back our claims. They are responsible for 100% of the risk on the claims and we do pay them a monthly premium for every policy that we guarantee and our job is to basically control the risk or minimize the risk upfront us as much as possible.
And we do that by making sure we have proper screening procedures in place that we are collecting all the necessary documents, the prepared reports and proof of income to make sure that we can do as much as we can. We can do as much as we can to kind of basically deter any professional tenants or any high-risk tenants from getting into the program in that sense. Now, yeah, in terms of how it's going so far, we do process a number of delinquencies every month.
We do partner with paralegals to help us go through that process as quickly as possible in order to reduce the risk. It does take us about three to four months to typically get a delinquent tenant out of the property and we keep paying you the rent as a landlord for as long as it takes us to get that tenant out and cover all the fees for the paralegals, et cetera. Now, in terms of what that process to do looks like is that's usually our last resort when it comes to starting an eviction.
We first try to really play a bit of a mediator role, so you know if you call us and say, "Hey Viler, the tenant hasn't paid the rent on November first, can you help me out?" we'll try to get in touch with that tenant, have a conversation, see if there is anything we can do to help. You know often times it is as simple as putting together a bit of a payment plan. These people are in a bit of a…
[0:17:55.0] NS: Right.
[0:17:56.0] VL: …A financial bind just to give them a chance to kind of catch up on the lost rent and sometimes that works. Other times we have people that are just — don't want to cooperate and aren't responsive, in which case we'll then pass on the case to one of our paralegals and then within two weeks, we're able to write a check to the landlord for the lost rent payment for that month, so I think we cover their mortgage payments and then move on.
[0:18:16.1] NS: Got it, okay.
[0:18:16.1] VL: The worst ones so far has been…
[0:18:19.0] NS: Yeah, let's talk about that a little bit. There are some worse case scenarios.
[0:18:24.1] VL: There are definitely some worse case scenarios and like I mentioned, typically three or four months is you're able to kind of write a delinquency but we've had cases where we've gone a full 12 months without you know, the lender has gone 12 months without getting their rents and this typically has happened last year in 2020 during COVID and some of the eviction bans, it really slowed us down.
We've had to pay out on 12 months of lost rent. In this particular case, the tenant also left behind about $8,000 worth of property damage that we were able to help the landlord with, in terms of just cleaning the place and bringing it back to the market. They obviously were very happy that we were there to support them during that nightmare scenario and we got a great testimonial with that particular landlord that's coming out on our website.
[0:19:05.1] NS: Perfect. Yeah, that'd be an interesting case and I'm sure they were. Now, I have to ask were they a small-time landlord? Where they like a single or like a couple property owner or?
[0:19:14.1] VL: Yeah, absolutely. They have about five properties that they are managing in a small town in Ontario and there's a bit of a safety concern there. The tenant was a bit, you know? We did have to get the police involved and it was a bit of a process.
[0:19:27.1] NS: Yeah, hopefully those scenarios are not as extreme going forward or at least there is only a few of them you have to deal with because I am sure it is stressful from so many different fronts to deal with that.
[0:19:37.2] VL: Absolutely. For us it's the numbers because we deal with thousands of tenant screenings and clients each month. We do see the full gamut of…
[0:19:45.2] NS: Sure, yeah. Absolutely, yeah. Now, I'm going to skip over. I think we kind of went over some of this stuff but in your opinion, why has the industry taken so long to develop the right tools to reduce the stress put on landlords on these situations? I feel like this is nothing new so why has it taken so long to help?
[0:20:04.1] VL: Yeah, I think that's a good question. I think it is related to your question previously in terms of what is happening in the world and the real estate market in general, right? If you look at our company, we're all about — our focus and the way that we've taken a different approach is that instead of providing other property management tools or just another tenant screening tool, we said, "Hey, what can we do to actually take away that risk of tenant delinquency for the landlord?"
Unfortunately, that is a risk that's gotten worse and worse overtime. It's really developed and there is a few factors that play into that, right? We've got a rising real estate market so the property prices are going up and mortgage payments are becoming more and more substantial, right? It needs to be able to have a way to cover that is very important. Secondly, we're seeing vacancies drop down dramatically.
We're seeing a lot of cities now taking action towards improving that to basically improving affordability, which is becoming a concern and to bringing more rental stock into the market as well and some of the regulations that are being put forth, you know, that regulatory environment is changing in favor of the tenants a bit more in many jurisdictions and that makes sense but at the same time, it is coming at the cost of the landlord.
As the cost of delinquency goes up for the landlord, the need for what we do becomes more and more important, right? We're at a point now where hey, you know, it is just even one bedroom condo is going to cost you quite a bit of money to actually buy and cover the mortgage payments and if that tenant doesn't pay the rent on time each month, it puts you in a really difficult bind to carry that property.
I think yeah, I think as time goes on this is something that's probably likely to get worse because it doesn't seem to be any change in the direction that the rental market is taking. As it becomes more difficult for tenants to get a place to live and to afford the house, the city has a responsibility to become I guess more tenant favoring and its bylaws and we'll be there to help landlords I guess keep up with that and protect themselves to make sure they're making their rent payments each month.
[0:21:55.0] NS: Yeah, that's exactly — that makes complete sense, nailed it. I did want to note that SingleKey has over 400 Google reviews and a 4.9 star rating. That's super impressive. Most companies, especially how kind of new you are to have that many reviews and that high of a rating is pretty impressive. Why do you think the response has been so overwhelmingly positive? Can you share some?
[0:22:22.0] VL: Absolutely, yeah and to be frank, we do ask the customers for reviews especially their experience with us and like most businesses do but I would say the number one reason is that hey, we're actually solving a real problem. People just are very happy with the fact that we exist and we're out there to provide and to do what we do and that reflects in the great customer feedback that we get on a daily basis.
That also coupled with some great customer service and I think that has really been a focus for us in the sense that you will see in a lot of the reviews they will actually name our team members by name.
[0:22:53.0] NS: Nice, yeah.
[0:22:54.0] VL: It was great, so that will fix that and we offer, you know, unlike a lot of kind of SaaS tools out there where it is just basically, "Hey, use our tool but you can't really get in touch with us. You can't call us." No, we take the opposite approach. We do actually want you to get in touch with us and so we can support you. We offer kind of like a live chat support in our website during the day and we also offer 1-800 number to get in touch with us if you have any trouble to kind of get you up and running. You know, it really goes a long way I think for people to come back to us and it is definitely reflected in the reviews.
[0:23:21.2] NS: Awesome, yeah. Now, before you go, is there anything you and your team at SingleKey have been working on or working towards that you want to share with the listeners?
[0:23:31.1] VL: Yes. Actually, the timing is great for this because we have a brand-new product that we are launching in market on Monday next week.
[0:23:39.0] NS: Amazing.
[0:23:40.1] VL: Yeah and this will be the first free automated rent collection tool for Canadian landlords out there, right? We're offering it basically a monthly automated pre-authorized debit rent collection tool where you can just — you know, it is very easy to use. You can set up your bank account there, sync up your bank account, invite the tenants to do the same and then just put in to say, "Hey look, the rent is $2,000 a month starting on November first" and it will pull it from the tenants account deposit into the landlord's account on a monthly basis on the first of the month automatically.
[0:24:08.1] NS: Perfect.
[0:24:08.2] VL: The great thing about that is not only does it save you a bit of time and no more checks, you know, checks are almost kind of like offensive now, right? You got a checkbook and pay for it and wait for it two weeks to show up.
[0:24:19.2] NS: No. Yeah, millennials are not, Gen Z's are not about that, yeah.
[0:24:25.0] VL: You got an invite to the link, "Hey, your landlord invited you to set up a monthly rent collection" and you just basically log in to your bank account, it will sync up your bank account and provide permission for the rent to kind of be processed automatically on a monthly basis and it is also better from you no longer have to kind of nudge tenants or remind them on…
[0:24:39.0] NS: Sure.
[0:24:40.1] VL: Or send you an e-transfer as well, so it takes that factor away. But the real differentiator here and this is part of the reason why I think it's for free is that you now we're working with the credit bureaus, to report these payments or rent payments to them as a trade line.
[0:24:53.3] NS: Oh, okay, nice.
[0:24:56.1] VL: The impact there is that you know, if you're a student or new to credit or maybe new to Canada person, this is a great way for you to actually build your credit.
[0:25:03.2] NS: Absolutely, yes.
[0:25:05.1] VL: It is the biggest expense you have on a monthly basis for the tenant anyway so it's absurd that it doesn't — you are not able to actually use that as a way to kind of build your credit history, right?
[0:25:13.1] NS: Yes, absolutely.
[0:25:14.2] VL: You could be, a bit of a financial inclusivity play here in the sense that you know, younger people you can definitely use this to kind of position yourself for buying or getting into qualifying for a mortgage…
[0:25:25.0] NS: Sure.
[0:25:25.2] VL: …and also there is a few religions out there that where people don't necessarily like to be in debt so this is another way to actually build their credit history which is…
[0:25:33.1] NS: Absolutely.
[0:25:34.1] VL: …Now, on the landlord side they love it because it gives tenants another reason to pay their rent on time, right? [inaudible 0:25:42.2] payments and you know, this idea came to us as a way, we get a lot of calls in a weekly basis to say, "Oh my god, we had this terrible tenant that we dealt with. Can I report them to you guys so no other landlord has to go through that?"
[0:25:52.2] NS: Yeah, of course.
[0:25:54.1] VL: The answer is no, we can't do that because, we can't just take your word for it, right? This is a very transparent way of building something similar where hey, we're simply basically reporting those tenants, rental payments to the credit reporting agency in a very controlled fashion and it is black and white, right? The rent is either paid on time or it was paid 30 days late or it was missed and it is really transparent than compliant in the way that we're doing it.
[0:26:19.1] NS: Awesome.
[0:26:20.1] VL: We're really excited for this product, yeah.
[0:26:21.1] NS: That's great. Well, I want to thank you so much for sharing all your great insight with us today and just one final question, for those looking, where can people connect with you online or find you online?
[0:26:33.1] VL: Absolutely, please go and visit singlekey.com to learn more about our services and book a call with us to try us out and if you're larger property manager as well, we have an enterprise solution for you that provides automation through our API and white labeling, so definitely get in touch with me or Sam to help you learn more about that and send us an email at info@singlekey.com.
[0:26:52.1] NS: Perfect. Well, until next time everyone, keep swimming.