Questions for Buymyrent.ca
1. Could you tell me a little about your company? Thanks!
BuyMyRent Inc. is an innovative, and up and coming company that offers unique services to small business landlords, allowing them to recover 100% of their lost revenues from unpaid rent. We are the first and the only company in Canada to offer this service.
By way of a small annual fee, landlords are guaranteed that they will be financially compensated for a portion of their lost rental income if tenants do not to pay their rent. Our solution provides a level of financial certainty and security to the landlord’s property management business.
2. As a small business landlord in Ontario your company sounds too good to be true. Could you explain how your program works? I’m very interested.
Many people have the same reaction as you, but actually our company is based on a very simple business model. For a small yearly fee, landlords will be able to sell us their tribunal or other court order that they have been awarded when the tenant defaults on their rent. That’s the basic plan which can be as low as 35 % of one month’s rent per year and will ensure we buy up to 3 months worth of lost rent. The premium plan costs starts at 50% of one month’s rent and in addition to paying out the value of rent, BuyMyRent will pay for damages, utilities, legal fees, or any other losses in the court order, for a total value of up to 4 months of rent. We have made it so simple to use that many of our landlords have had the same reaction as you. Rest assured, our services are true and they are that good.
We have worked very hard to make our services as easy to understand and as simple to use as possible.
Here is the further break down of how it works:
- The first step is to create a free user account on BuyMyRent.ca. This account is used to manage your various plans.
- Once your account is created, simply select one of our plans. One plan is attached to one unit based on your needs. The price of the plan depends on how much you want BuyMyRent to purchase if you need to sell an order. For most of our landlords, they base their purchase value on the value of 1 month‘s rent, but you can enter whatever amount you are comfortable with so long as it does not exceed the equivalent of 1 month’s rent for that unit.
- Once the plan is selected, simply complete the online form and pay the plan amount. If ever you have a tenant that does not pay their rent, get a court order against them.
- Once the order is received simply log back into your account and submit a sell request. The sell request transfers your unpaid rent debt to us which we compensate you dollar for dollar up to the maximum of your plan value. All is done via your online account and takes only minutes to complete. The documents required to submit a sell request are:
o Copy of the Lease Agreement between the landlord and the tenant in question;
o Proof of ownership for the property;
o Copy of the Order form the tribunal or court; and
o Any other information required by BuyMyRent as a show of proof to satisfy the above criteria.
- BuyMyRent will process your request and send you a check for the amount of the sell request within days of you submitting it to us. You can make as many purchase requests as required up to your plan’s maximum purchase amount.
3. I’m excited about your company’s services. How did you come up with this idea and how did you get a team together and form this idea?
A few years ago, I was having an unfortunate string of bad luck with tenants. It seemed to me that each new tenant was worse than the previous one. I started looking at what I was maybe doing wrong and the sources of information I was relying on to decide who to rent to. After a few months of analyzing my screening procedure, I realized that no matter what sources of information I used, nothing could provide me with the reassurance that the tenant that I was going to select was going to pay their rent. During my analysis/research, I came across a couple of European insurance companies that provided landlords with rent insurance. Unfortunately, these services were not available in Canada. For the most part, the reason why this type of insurance is not available within Canada is due to our laws, the way tenant information is tracked, the lack of statistical information and how our legal system tends to favour the tenant over the landlord. Since insurance companies are normally risk averse, they do not find that the Canadian rental market would be a good target for these types of services.
As a result of the above analysis and information, my partner and I decided to see if there was something we could do to introduce this type of service within Canada. We spent the next year and half going through mountains of statistical information from hundreds of sources. We even identified information from CMHC, which they themselves did not know they had. After putting this information together, we realized that there was a potential for this type of service if the right ingredients came together. Now, one thing we knew when we started this is that we needed someone who knew the legal system. Mr. Beaudoin and I, therefore, approached Mr. Kim von Arx a gentlemen which I had the opportunity to work with on another start-up. We explained what we wanted to do and how we wanted to provide the service. Mr. von Arx, being an entrepreneur at heart, was easily convinced and agreed to join our partnership.
4. I’m just wondering, with all the problems landlords in Ontario and Quebec face, how can you stay in business insuring what will likely be a lot of debt?
We are confident that the prior work we did analyzing the market trends and statistical data will allow us to manage the debt load we will assume. We operate on the requirement where landlords must do their due diligence and make background/credit checks on the tenant before renting to them, and choose those that have not shown any obvious signs of risk to the landlord. Our plans are designed to provide a landlord with a way to recover their losses that they could not have otherwise avoided through a routine background or credit check.
5. Insurance companies have stipulations and criteria. What stipulations do you have for landlords in their screening process? Do you require us to do credit checks? Tenants must have insurance? Tenants must have viable work references? Etc.
First, landlords should not relax their screening process when selecting a tenant. Even though your rent is recoverable by our service, having a bad tenant is not without its consequences. BuyMyRent will not take responsibility for the eviction process nor will it manage the repair of damages in the property if the tenant does not maintain the residence.
The following are the plan stipulations:
1. The landlord is required to perform a full tenant screening process via a recognized credit verification agency.
2. The credit verification of the tenant cannot contain a bankruptcy in the last 7 years, or any history of unpaid rent.
3. The rent of the unit cannot exceed 30% of the total household income of the tenant(s).
4. The owner of the plan must be the owner of the property. Proof of ownership must be provided when filling for a sell request (selling an assignment of debt).
5. To file a sell request, the plan owner must have received an order from a recognized body authorized to deal with landlord and tenant disputes.
6. The order must come from a decision that is based on a breach that occurred during the term of the plan.
7. The following documentation will be required to be provided to sell an order:
a. Copy of the Lease Agreement between the landlord and the tenant in question;
b. Proof of ownership for the property;
c. Copy of the Order form the tribunal or court; and
d. Any other information required by BuyMyRent as a show of proof to satisfy the above criteria.
6. If you do purchase a plan….and you go after the tenant in small claims….does that make the plan null and void????
If a landlord purchases a plan, and makes a request to sell a court order to us, BuyMyRent own that court order. The landlord would no longer have the ability to take the tenant to small claims court on that order. However, we may sell that order to a collections agency that would do that for us.
First we are not an insurance company which gives us some flexibility on how we do things. Secondly we purchase the order from the landlord which he received from the courts. So instead of the landlord having to collect the funds from the tenant, he simply sells dollar for dollar the amount stipulated on the court order to us, which we in turn, payout the amount to the landlord.
Once the order is sold to us, the debt no longer belongs to the landlord so there would not be a need to take the tenant to small claims court, at least not by the landlord himself. That said, if the landlord wanted to take the tenant to court for whatever reason, he can – but he or she would obviously not be able to make a purchase request from us on such order. Nothing stops the landlord from going down this road. Our services compensate the landlord from lost revenues by buying his or her debt. The only way that this could affect his compensation from BuyMyRent is if the landlord would have no financial loss.
7. Do you have any advice on how to make sure I get good tenants? I will buy your plan; just I hope I never have to use it!!
This is the million dollar question. You must do your research on the tenant. This means a credit check to start off with. If the tenant provides you with references, call them and ask a lot of questions. There are four things I do and would recommend others do before signing a new lease agreement:
- First, the rent amount must never exceed 30% of the tenant’s net income. This goes up to 35% if the tenant works part time. If the rent is over this percentage, statistics have demonstrated that the tenant is in danger of falling behind on their rent during the term of the lease.
- The second thing that I do is that I always sign the lease in the tenant’s current residence. This gives me a chance to see where they live, how they maintain the place, and it allows me speak to neighbors & landlords. It also allows me to validate the information they have provided to me on their application. You would not believe what I have seen and the number of tenants I have walked away from after seeing how they live.
- Thirdly, I never accept a tenant that wants to pay for the full term of the lease in advance. It’s really tempting, but good tenants do not pay full leases in advance. They just don’t.
- My last advice is to rely on your gut instinct. If something seems out of place then trust your instincts and walk away.
We could go on and on but we plan to open a full section on our site for advice to help landlords address this issue.
8. Does this type of service exist anywhere else? Are you the first to create this?
This type of service is being offered in certain European countries as a form of insurance. We are the first company in Canada to offer this type of service. Our services are offered coast to coast in every Canadian provinces and territory.
9. Is there a way this could help Tenants?
Our policy can be purchased by tenants to reassure the landlord but the beneficiary must be the landlord in which the tenant is renting from. We are working at offering additional services to tenants but it’s a little too early to give more details on that subject.
10. You are experts about rental properties. Do you offer property management services?
Sorry, we don’t offer property management services. That said your local landlord association can provide you with a list of reputable property management services in your area. In the following months we will be inviting certain organizations, including property management services to list their services on our site. Keep checking our site, buymyrent.ca, for up-to-date listings.
Tags: buymyrent, rent insurance, tenant damages
