An estimated 1.4 trillion US dollars are paid to landlords of residential properties in America, but only 20% of these landlords choose to report the rent paid. This has a major impact on the loan scores and the credit story of millions of Americans.
The rent reporting, which is paid for on time for credit offices, can significantly increase the creditworthiness, but since it traditionally was not a common practice, some tenants have no credit history at all, which makes them “credit invisible” and their ability to get a loan, a car, a house and much more. Over 50 million Americans have a loan story with the three large loan offices: Experian, Equifax and Transunion.
“We leave over $ 5.3 trillion on the table, we have to do it better,” said Wemimo Abbey, CEO and co-founder of Esusu, who was included in the list of CNBC Disruptor 50 in CNBC in an interview on CNBC's “Worldwide Exchange” on Wednesday.
Esusu is a reporting service for the creditworthiness, which has teamed up with 75% of the largest rental companies and has recently created a direct line for tenants to align their rent payments. “We have access to the democratized one because they have a long cock of people who do not live in commercially managed living space,” said Abbey.
Esusu dealt with Goldman Sachs, Mercy Housing and Cushman & Wakefield as well as partnerships with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to increase the number of units that report the rent as part of the loan.
Further coverage of the 2025 CNBC Disruptor 50
What is “credit invisibility”
The credit scores, which are located on a scale of 300-850, indicate the option of repaying invoices such as credit cards and managing and limiting the debt owed. The lower a score or the lack of creditworthiness that hesitate to extend the lenders, or you can demand extreme interest rates for a loan. Some landlords require a creditworthiness to determine the authorization for a rent application, and although this is not the only data point considered, this can influence the landlord not to approve an application.
This financial inequality has a significant effect from minorities, with about 26% of Hispanic consumers and 27% of black consumers, according to Oliver Wyman, 16% of white and Asian consumers are as invisible or indescribable. Immigrants are also more susceptible to invisibility, since their credit file in the USA does not take their credit history into account in their country of origin.
Esusu founder Abbey and Samir Goel grew up and observed how their families fought financially as immigrants from Lagos, Nigeria and Neu -Delhi, India, which was a founding motivation for Esusu.
“When we came here, we had no creditworthiness. We went to one of the largest financial institutions to borrow money. We were rejected and had to accept loans from a predatory lender who wanted to award over 400%,” said Abbey. “My mother sold my father's wedding ring. We borrowed money from church members and so we started.”
Abbey said when Esusu started, only 10% of the rent payments were reported to credit offices. ESUSU has set up loan scores for 250,000 Americans who have loan activities of $ 50 billion, said Abbey.
The assessment of the startup has now achieved 1 billion US dollars based on the demand for services.
Increasing creditworthiness by paying the rent
The rent is one of the greatest expenses for most Americans who do not have a house. More than 90% of the tenants pay rent on time, but since there is no report, there are no records about it.
Reports can be initiated either by the landlord or the tenant. In retail for commercially managed housing services, connections to one or all three credituit services may already have a fee to report them.
The tenants also have the option of contacting rental reports such as ESUSU, which calculates a monthly fee of USD 2.50 in order to report a timely payment on behalf of the tenant. The recording of the amount paid is expected to be displayed about 30 days after its payment.
But paying the rent is not enough; It has to be paid on time. While some agencies may give 30 days to compensate for the missed payment, others may not affect this, and this can have a negative impact on creditworthiness.
There are some other ways to build loans in addition to rental reports for those who do not be a loan story or to increase their creditworthiness. To become an authorized user in the credit card of a family member or a friend is an option. Getting a secure credit card that has no annual fee is another option. The use of a loan builder loan in which banks present the total loan amount according to a certain number of payments and provide their payment activity of the credit, is also an option for people with limited credit history and those who are invisible.
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