Collection Records Show Many Who are Evicted are Repeat Offenders

An effective way to predict the behavior of renters is through examining rental-related collection records, according to a new analysis from TransUnion.

According to TransUnion, involuntary turnover (which includes defaults as well as evictions for other reasons) costs property managers about $3,500 per unit in court costs, lost revenue, and other types of expenses.

“Rental evictions and collections records offer a unique, insightful look into a resident’s current record,” said Mike Doherty, SVP of TransUnion's rental screening solutions group. “Rental-related collection records may be timelier than eviction public records—which can take weeks or months to process through the system—and the combination of the two helps property managers make smarter decisions about whether to lease to a potential resident.”

The analysis, which compared records of individuals who had been evicted with records of those who were not evicted from almost 200 properties, showed that evicted residents have almost three times as many prior eviction and rental-related collection records than those in the “not evicted” group. About 5.5 percent of those in the “not evicted” group had prior evictions; for residents who were ultimately evicted, that share rose to about 21.7 percent.
Residents in the “evicted” group have double the number of rental-related collection records than those in the “non-evicted” group, according to the analysis.

According to ResidentScore, which TransUnion uses to measure on a scale of 350 to 850 the likelihood of future evictions or other costly negative renter outcomes using collection and other consumer report information, consumers with a score between 650 and 749 had an eviction rate of only 0.3 percent. The percentage increased substantially up to 12.3 percent for consumers who scored between 350 and 449, according to TransUnion.

Click here to view the entire TransUnion analysis.