Realty Partnership Helps Recent Grads Build Credit, Find Housing

By Gregory John "G.J." Vitale on May 7, 2013

Credit. What is it? For most of us, credit means those bearded dudes singing the FreeCreditReport.com jingles on TV, but it’s simple really. Good credit will allow you to take loans out from the bank. It is the bank’s way of saying “Hey, we recognize that you’ve paid for stuff on time in the past, so we trust that you’ll pay us back too.” For many college students, credit is something that’s hard to build up. Most of us have a debit card and it is not the same as a credit card.

Well viola, it seems that Next Step Realty and WilliamPaid have found a way for college students to build credit by doing something they do every month: paying their rent. The online system allows students to pay their bills and earn credit in the process. According the Next Step Realty CEO Blair Brandt, “This new suite of tools ensures that our support doesn’t end when you receive your keys.” That’s right. The site is also intimately involved with the apartment search process, helping recent college grads find apartments that fit their preferences.

Currently, the system only operates in the Greater New York City area because that’s the original site of Next Step Realty’s business. Since 2010, they have been saving recent college grads an average of 20-40% on brokerage fees, not a small amount of money considering New York’s cost of living.

The other partner in this venture, WilliamPaid, has been serving its customers as an electronic rent payment processor. Have you ever had the experience when you thought you had a great idea only to find out that it already existed? Well, that’s what happened to me when I found out about WilliamPaid. By allowing customers to pay their rent online, WilliamPaid removes the awkward visit from the landlord asking for rent, and the inconvenient walk to the post office to send rent checks out. Tenants can even setup an automated deposit system, where they can choose for the program to always send a specified amount on the first of the month.

The cooperative effort of the two companies will result in easy savings for recent college grads who oftentimes need every penny they can get. Perhaps more importantly, however, are the long-term benefits of building credit.

Photo by Lola’s Big Adventure

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