Dayrise Residential

Featured Challenge

It’s no secret that classic methods of verifying employment and income aren’t making the grade anymore. Crystal Jones, Director of Systems and Support at Dayrise, explains how outdated methods weren’t up to the task of stopping fraud. “We were using Realpage products that didn't have any income verification, so we were relying on calling employers, the old-school way of verifying employment. We’d seen an extreme uptick in fraud and delinquencies over the last few years. Post-COVID, the Georgia market was slow on evictions, and keeping these non-paying tenants in our units was a major concern for investors.” Investor concerns inspired Dayrise to take a proactive role in combating fraud, but the result was a more intense workload for team members. “Internally, we set goals to reduce bad debt in our collections,” Jones says. “We analyzed those delinquent accounts all the way back to the application process to identify trends and gaps and saw a lot of social security discrepancies. But this required on-site teams to be fraud investigators and drill down for anomalies in screening results and credit scores.” Ultimately, Dayrise determined that the markers of fraud could be easily detected with the right screening system. “I have a background in researching fraud so I’m very familiar with finding mismatches,” says Jones. “Our team found that the fraudsters we had in residence should never have passed screening in the first place. We immediately started looking for a more robust income verification system and process”

Featured Solution

“Initially we were looking for social security screening, and Verifast offered that, which was a big value add,” Jones explains. “We were just reaching out for solutions when Verifast was still fairly new, so we've grown together. It's been a fantastic partnership.” Despite Verifast being new on the scene when Dayrise approached, Jones describes the implementation process as, “seamless. We scheduled, turned on the API, and everything went live so we could arrange our training. We were up-and-running in less than a week. Now we can go live at any site within 24 hours after submitting some information.” Any partnership requires collaboration, and as an early client, Dayrise helped shape the Verifast product. “We’ve definitely offered suggestions because in property management, nothing is ever perfect straight out of the box and somebody always throws you a curveball. Verifast has always taken our feedback and rolled it into their product,” Jones says.

Featured Results

The Dayrise team implemented Verifast a few sites at a time until it was implemented across all of its communities. “We piloted VeriFast on four properties initially and saw immediate results in terms of catching issues,” says Jones. “We rolled out in phases, adding more sites every 90 days after reviewing performance and providing feedback. It took us about 12 months to get it fully rolled out.” The results quickly became a windfall for Dayrise and their investors. “Over thirteen months, Verifast reduced our delinquency by over $2M across our portfolio. In 24 months we saw a 75% reduction in delinquency as a portfolio. Our investors are completely thrilled and that's been our biggest win,” Jones says. Verifast serves as a deterrent that keeps fraudulent applicants away. “Websites and social media platforms tend to drive fraudulent renters to those properties where they know they can get in. We were seeing a huge amount of those fraudulent applications initially. Once we put the Verifast information on our website, the fraudsters realized they weren't getting in, so the fraud slowed down.” Jones also considers how the rewards weren’t strictly monetary. “Verifast saved our site teams from having to pore over screening results, and the verification was able to tell a more complete story. Verifast is a super great partner. They’ve helped us customize how the system presents information, connecting prospects’ bank statements, pay stubs, and other income.” “We’ve seen an uptick in denials, but that means our approvals are higher quality and more reliable. Preventing delinquency was our biggest focus and Verifast has absolutely met that need,” Jones concludes.