Berkadia, a joint commercial real estate venture between Berkshire Hathaway and Jefferies Financial Group, today announced signing a multiyear agreement with rental data reporting fintech Esusu, according to a press release.
The company says by adding Esusu’s rental reporting technology to its existing network, the partnership will unlock greater equity for renters, improve property performance for multifamily owners and operators and reduce lender risk.
It also claims that Esusu’s services enable borrowers to see “scalable social impact results”, including credit score increases, new established scores and eviction prevention, as well as improved rent collections, reduced delinquencies and decreased turnover.
“We could not be happier to have a multi-year agreement with Esusu, which allows Berkadia to extend a powerful property performance enhancing solution to our clients,” said Bryce Nyberg, Director of Berkadia Digital. “This will help owners and operators reach their own ESG goals at an exceptional value and support Esusu’s critical and innovative objective–helping renters build and improve their credit.”
This agreement follows an ongoing partnership that was formed when Esusu joined Berkadia’s inaugural BeEngaged program in February 2020, which aims to advise and accelerate commercial real estate tech startups to foster innovation and collaboration in the industry.
As a result of that initial partnership, Berkadia first began partnering to implement Esusu’s services in Spring 2021, has since expanded to over 34,000 units and has established 5,3000 credit scores for residents to date.
Berkadia says that throughout the partnership there has been growing awareness in the industry around equity in multifamily housing. It says this is emphasized by Esusu’s recent collaboration with Freddie Mac, which sees the government-sponsored provide closing costs credit to multifamily borrowers that agree to use Esusu for reporting on-time rental payments.
Esusu also provides discounted pricing for these and other Freddie Mac borrowers who agree to use their platform. Due to this partnership and introductions through Berkadia, the fintech says it now services more than 285 properties across more than 10 management companies, including Burbank Housing, Comunidad, Eagle Property Capital, Morgan Properties and Odin Properties.
“Our credit building initiative has helped build or establish credit scores for tens of thousands of multifamily renters nationwide,” stated Corey Aber, Vice President of Mission, Policy and Strategy for Freddie Mac Multifamily, in the release. “It is an essential component of our effort to build a more equitable multifamily housing system.”
Esusu’s continuing growth across the rental reporting ecosystem follows a $130 million Series B led by SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2 in January, which also included participation from proptech VC Wilshire Lane Capital. That funding round came less than a year after a $10 million Series A co-led by Serena William’s Serena Ventures and Motley Fool Ventures.
In other recent proptech news, Walker & Dunlop expanded its affordable housing platform with a new investment sales team. Griffin Realty Trust also sold a majority stake in its $1.1 billion office portfolio.