Effective Immediately:
All Rental Research Services Instant Inquiry Reports that include an Equifax credit file are now considered “soft” inquiries on the consumer’s credit file, and therefore will not have any impact on their credit score.
Historically, any inquiry submitted to the credit bureau for a credit granting purpose was considered a “hard” inquiry. Hard inquiries may reduce a consumer’s credit score because they are often tied to an increased debt load and the associated increase in risk. Equifax changed their policy on 12/14/2018, and so did we. The moment Equifax made this available we implemented their new process immediately.
This is currently only available through Equifax, but we expect TransUnion and Experian to implement a similar change soon.
So now when your applicants ask, “Will this application impact my credit score?”, you can confidently assure them that it will not.