Entrata President Chase Harrington recently sat down with Travis Honaker, Product Development Manager in the multifamily division of Fannie Mae, to discuss the benefits of positive rent payment reporting. (Learn more about Fannie Mae and their positive rent payment pilot.) Entrata is proud to be one of the three rent reporting vendors participating in the Fannie Mae pilot.

Fannie Mae’s role in the multifamily industry

While most people are familiar with what Fannie Mae does for single family housing, it also has a major impact in the multifamily space. For over 35 years, Fannie Mae Multifamily has served the secondary mortgage market as a reliable source of mortgage capital in every market, every day. It provides liquidity, stability, and affordability to the multifamily market in a disciplined fashion while maintaining its credit standards and minimizing losses. The Fannie Mae multifamily business relies on its Delegated Underwriting and Servicing (DUS®) program to finance quality, sustainable, and affordable rental housing. It is executed primarily through its partnership with the DUS Lender network of 24 financial institutions and independent mortgage lenders.

Why did Fannie Mae launch their rent reporting pilot?

Fannie Mae’s mission is to facilitate equitable and sustainable access to quality affordable rental housing. Positive rent payment reporting has been identified as a tool to create a more equitable housing system. Fannie Mae launched its pilot to help individuals with no credit history or bad credit to have on-time payments reported to the three major credit bureaus to help maintain or improve their credit scores.

“Our Positive Rent Payment pilot started out of that increased focus on renters,” said Honaker.“ We were looking at areas where we can make the most impact…but one thing that rang true at almost every level of that housing journey, whether they were renting an apartment, whether they were buying a home is that insufficient and/or limited access to credit is a major obstacle.”

Pilot results*

One of the primary goals of the pilot is to drive adoption of positive rent payment reporting across the industry, and Fannie Mae is off to a good start. In under two years, Fannie Mae has had 2,550 properties sign up with the pilot, which accounts for 550,000 units. Additionally, they’ve seen 35,000 renters establish credit scores and 60% of participants are improving their credit scores.

The cost to the individual properties is minimal (~$1.50 per unit per month), but the impact it has to renters is immense.

Learn more

To learn more about the impacts positive rent payment reporting is having on the multifamily industry, check out Travis and Chase’s full conversation here.

Find more information on Fannie Mae’s positive rent payment pilot here.

*Data according to Fannie Mae’s pilot vendors from September 2022 to March 2024.