Understanding the RV Index Score

The following article explains the RV Index score in screening. It will explain the difference from the credit scores and what is used to determine the score.

Some might wonder what the difference is between the RV Index Score and a Credit score. The RV Index Score is a risk assessment score. The calculation considers the applicant's credit score, Rent to Income, Debt to Income, and the Ratio between Positive and Negative tradelines. The score is combined with other responsible applicants to provide an overall risk score of those individuals. Guarantors are not included in that combined RV Index Score result. This will also allow you to evaluate how much of a risk all the applicants pose considering their credit history. 

If you have questions about whether your score is too low or too high considering the number of applications that are either getting through or being denied, there is a report called "Screening Score Analysis". This will allow you to pull all who were screened in the selected properties, during the selected period of time, for either RV Index Score or Credit Scores. You can then assess the results and determine if there should be an adjustment made to the scores.

Some notes on screening:

  1. Do we have the ability to choose between a Hard credit pull and a Soft credit pull?
    • No, we only perform Hard credit checks.

  2. Which Credit Bureaus do we pull credit from?
    • We only utilize Experian.
  3. Can you rescore the RV index if the income needs to be revised in the application?
    • Yes, if you edit the income on the application, upon saving it will automatically rescore the RV index using the updated income and revise the rent to income and debt to income ratios.