Tenant Credit Check Tool <\/a>(TCCT), and it\u2019s the brainchild of 28-year-old Christos Clerides \u2013 who, after several years living (and renting) in London and Amsterdam, came back to Cyprus and was shocked to find how little was expected of him as a prospective tenant.<\/p>\n\u201c\u2018Let me know what you need from my side\u2019,\u201d he recalls asking the agent in charge of the property. \u201c\u2018Job contract, pay slip \u2013 what do you need from me?\u2019 And the agent replied, \u2018Nothing. You\u2019re a good guy. Just send me a deposit and the first month in advance\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I was shocked,\u201d Clerides told the Cyprus Mail.<\/p>\n
His app aims to provide at least a cursory credit check, using Open Banking API\u2019s \u2013 an EU-approved tool that creates a secure interface between banks and third parties, allowing the latter to access a customer\u2019s bank data with the customer\u2019s explicit consent.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt only reads the data that are publicly accessible through those API\u2019s,\u201d says Clerides.<\/p>\n
The process is easy enough. The prospective tenant gets an email notification from the platform (located at Proper Property, Clerides\u2019 real-estate publication) asking them to provide details of their main bank account, the one they use for daily transactions, and consent to its data-mining for the previous three months.<\/p>\n
The TCCT algorithm then has \u201cread-mode access to those data, the data are not stored\u201d.<\/p>\n
A check is carried out, then \u201cthe landlord or the agent will receive a score. Just a score, nothing else, no words, nothing\u201d. It\u2019s not a \u2018score\u2019 in the sense of a rating, but a number \u2013 \u201c1,000, let\u2019s say\u201d \u2013 representing the algorithm\u2019s calculation of how much rent this person \u201cis able to pay every month, based on the transactions\u201d.<\/p>\n
Credit assessments are nothing new, of course \u2013 but TCCT is fast and simple, specifically geared to the property market, and also differs in connecting directly to a subject\u2019s bank account.<\/p>\n
Clerides is at pains to emphasise that the app sees \u201cnot amounts, just transactions. The algorithm is not able to see numbers, due to GDPR\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cAll the data is anonymised \u2013 no name, no description, no sensitive details.\u201d It can\u2019t read the customer\u2019s income, or their bank balance.\u00a0<\/p>\n
What it is reading is the relationship between credit and debit transactions, he says \u2013 i.e. money in and money out \u2013 evaluating \u201cif the money is stable\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Asked directly how it\u2019s able to come up with a number if it\u2019s not seeing numbers \u2013 in other words, not seeing the value of each transaction \u2013 he repeats that \u201cwhat it analyses is the flow and consistency of transactions. How steadily money goes in and out, and whether there\u2019s a balance between credit and debit\u201d.<\/p>\n
That said, it\u2019s unclear if the app will be compatible with local banks\u2019 data protection policies.<\/p>\n
Banking sources were emphatic that it\u2019s not so simple, and that, even with the subject\u2019s consent, GDPR and banking law require an impact assessment to take place before any personal data can be divulged to third parties \u2013 though their comments weren\u2019t directed specifically at TCCT, with which they were unfamiliar. <\/p>\n
How helpful will this new tool be?<\/p>\n
\u201cImagine going from 0 to 1,\u201d replies Clerides \u2013 meaning that, in the current situation of zero security, any security is \u201ca huge step\u201d.<\/p>\n
But of course it says nothing about a person\u2019s character, or their intentions. Having money in the bank is no guarantee that a tenant will be reliable.<\/p>\n
\u201cDefinitely. You can be a millionaire, and [still] decide that \u2018I\u2019m not going to pay my landlord\u2019.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
This is true, and goes to the crux of the issue. There\u2019s a chronic problem with non-paying tenants, according to Kyprianos Theocharides, president of the Cyprus Land & Property Owners Organisation.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have many, many cases,\u201d he told the Cyprus Mail, \u201cwhere a person owns property, which is mortgaged to the bank. They rent to a tenant, the tenant doesn\u2019t pay them, their plan was to use the rent money to pay their monthly instalment, they can\u2019t pay the instalment \u2013 so the bank takes the property and liquidates it before they even manage to go to court and get the money.\u201d<\/p>\n
The massive obstacle, says Theocharides \u2013 and the reason why the situation is uniquely bad, even compared to other countries \u2013 is the extremely slow pace of the justice system.<\/p>\n
Disputes between landlords and tenants are inevitable \u2013 \u201cbut if a dispute could go to court and be settled in 1-2 months, there wouldn\u2019t be a problem. Unfortunately, what happens here is that it can take five years for your case to be tried\u201d.<\/p>\n
Dodgy tenants exploit the system by not paying rent, knowing that going to court is prohibitive, and of course eviction is impossible without a court order \u2013 never mind that, after five years, \u201cit can take another two or three years for the police to execute the order,\u201d adds Theocharides.<\/p>\n
Legislation to deal with the problem has been slow in coming. The last significant change was in January 2020 when a law was passed making evictions easier in so-called \u2018controlled\u2019 properties, those older buildings subject to the Rent Control Law where a landlord\u2019s hands are even more tied.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a subject in itself \u2013 and, for instance, underlies the recent spate of collapsing balconies in Limassol, says Theocharides, a result of impotent owners left with no incentive to maintain the property.<\/p>\n
Non-controlled properties are supposedly different, ruled by the free market \u2013 and the paradox is that places like Limassol, with its spiralling prices, are very much a landlord\u2019s market.<\/p>\n
You\u2019d expect an app filtering tenants to be used by rapacious landlords seeking to weed out applicants who can\u2019t afford their exorbitant rent \u2013 but instead it\u2019s being promoted for the more modest purpose of trying to make sure they pay rent at all.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s unclear if the Tenant Credit Check Tool can make any difference, given all the flaws in the system.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe it can help,\u201d says Theocharides optimistically. \u201cIt\u2019s important, and it\u2019s useful \u2013 because when you\u2019re renting something, and allowing someone into your property, it\u2019s good to know who you\u2019re dealing with.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the point, in the end \u2013 to know \u2018who you\u2019re dealing with\u2019. Tech and apps offer reassurance but the relationship, like all relationships, will also be guided by what Clerides calls the current method of \u201chandshakes and instinct\u201d \u2013 presumably what that estate agent was relying on when he told him \u2018You\u2019re a good guy\u2019.<\/p>\n
His app \u201cdoesn\u2019t replace human judgement,\u201d confirms its developer.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt just supplements it with data, so as to make the process more fair and transparent for both sides.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It may sound like progress to potential landlords, but sorting out the rental mess remains complex A new…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":266305,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[2306,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-266304","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mobile","8":"tag-mobile","9":"tag-technology","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266304\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}