How do you qualify renters for the rent guarantee?

We determine a maximum amount of recommended monthly rent based on your income, assets, expenses and history of paying bills on time.

To determine your qualified rent we require:

• Access to greater than six months worth of transactions in your primary checking account. This is the account where you receive income and that you use to pay for expenses.

• Access to or verification of any savings or investments accounts

Here's how we do it:

Our analysis is based on direct verification of your financial transactions. In other words, we look at your bank account(s) rather than asking for statements, pay stubs or tax returns.

Income verification:

Income is calculated as an exponentially weighted moving average of your transaction history. This means that we favor the more recent data points over the historical ones, so if you were paid $50,000 last year and $100,000 this year, the mean would be $75,000 and the weighted moving average would be approximately $83,000.

Qualified rent:

Assume that you have no assets, qualified rent is calculated by taking income, subtracting expenses, adding back any rent-related expenses, and leaving a buffer for savings.

For example, if you have income of $4,000/month and $2,500 in expenses per month, we have:

$4,000 - $2,500 - (10% of $4,000 → $400) = $1,100 qualified rent

If we can determine (either through our own analysis or through documentation that you provide) that $1,500 of that $2,500 of expenses are rent, then that bumps your qualified rent to $2,600.

If you do have assets, the qualified rent in the same method as above except that total income incorporates your additional assets. Our calculation here takes into account:

• The quantity of your assets. For example, if you have $100,000 in standard interest-bearing savings account then this could theoretically cover monthly rent of $8,333. This is one factor that we use in determining how much your available assets should increase total monthly income and qualified rent.

• The growth-rate of your assets. If your assets are depleting then they we will weigh them less significantly in our calculation. If they're growing they they'll have more weight. If you have questions about your eligibility feel free to reach out to support@caretaker.com.