Paying rent on time won’t help your credit score unless someone reports it to the credit bureaus, and most landlords don’t. Ask yours to start, or use a rent-reporting service that covers all three bureaus. Reporting helps most when your credit file is thin, and only with scores that count rent.
Picture a renter with one credit card opened last year and three years of on-time rent, the biggest bill they pay. A lender checking that file sees one year of history, because none of those 36 rent payments ever reached a credit report.
Reporting puts rent on a credit report as an account that records each payment. Many rent-reporting services will also add as much as 24 months of past payments, so two of those three years can show up at once. Not every score reads it, though. FICO Score 9 and 10 count reported rent, and so does VantageScore. FICO Score 8, the version lenders use most, ignores it.
Mortgages are the hard case. The older FICO versions that mortgage lenders typically use ignore rent too. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac also accept VantageScore 4.0, which counts it, but a lender can stick with the older FICO, so ask your lender which score it pulls.
Start with your landlord or property manager. Some already report rent, sometimes through a program you have to opt into. If yours doesn’t, try Experian Boost, a free tool that adds rent you pay online to your Experian report. Experian says even FICO Score 8 counts it.
To reach all three bureaus, pay a rent-reporting service. Before you sign up, find out:
- what it charges up front and each month
- whether it adds past rent, and for how much
- which bureaus it reports to, since a lender that checks one it skips won’t see your rent
- whether it reports late payments too
If your file already holds years of on-time card and loan payments, a rent account adds little, so skip the paid service. Otherwise, get your rent reported before you apply for anything, then pull your free credit reports and check that the rent account appears on each one it should.
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