Leasing Glossary · Property Tech

Abandonment: a household leaving without returning possession; when it was determined, and on what evidence, sets the deposit deadline (Move-In & Move-Out).
Accessibility overlay: a script that claims to make a site accessible on load without changing the underlying markup a screen reader reads; it doesn't fix the site (Listings, Websites & Marketing).
Addendum: a document attached to the lease by rule (pets, parking, a lead or flood disclosure), recording the rule and version that required it (The Lease).
Adverse action notice: the notice owed when a decision rests in whole or part on a consumer report, including denial, requiring a co-signer or a larger deposit; it names the agency, says the agency didn't decide, states the consumer's rights and any credit score used (Applications & Screening).
Advertised price snapshot: an append-only record of the price as shown on one channel over a time range: base rent, total monthly price, each component and its treatment, the assumed term and move-in date, the concession, the rule version and a payload hash (Listings, Websites & Marketing).
Agent-led tour: a tour appointment with a person, booked on the property's calendar in its time zone, with an outcome the agent records (toured, no-show, cancelled, rescheduled) (Leads, CRM, Tours & the Leasing Center).
AI call scoring: a model that scores recorded calls, for example for "intent to rent"; if the score decides who gets a callback first it is an automated decision about people (Leads, CRM, Tours & the Leasing Center).
AI leasing agent: software that answers prospects across chat, text, email and voice, schedules tours and says it's an AI; availability, price, fees and policies come from tools reading the property's data, never improvised (Leads, CRM, Tours & the Leasing Center).
Amenity premium: an adjustment to a floor plan's base price for a unit's view, floor, renovation level or position, stored as data on the unit (Revenue Management & Pricing).
Application: a household's request to lease a specific unit at a quoted rent, term and move-in date, with every adult and guarantor a member with their own consent, reports and result; minors are listed as occupants and never screened (Applications & Screening).
Application fee: the per-member fee collected before any report is ordered, computed from the jurisdiction's rule version with its cap, waiver conditions, receipt contents and refund deadline (Applications & Screening).
Asking rent, executed rent: what a property publishes, versus what it actually agreed with its concession and term; competitors' executed rents are the pooled data the antitrust cases are about (Revenue Management & Pricing).
Association form: a lease form published and revised by an association; the operator adopts each revision and records its form number and revision as the template's source (The Lease).
Auto-accept: a feature that applies price recommendations automatically; under the Final Judgment each licensee or user must configure it individually, and it belongs to a named person, never a vendor default (Revenue Management & Pricing).
Balance due: a negative final statement, a receivable from a former resident that gets a demand, a payment window and then the collections path (Move-In & Move-Out).
BIPA (Biometric Information Privacy Act): Illinois' law requiring consent before collecting or disclosing biometric identifiers, timely destruction, and a private right of action; the strictest state law and the one that drives design (Applications & Screening).
Borrowed identity: a real person's identity used by someone else applying; the ID-and-selfie match is the check (Applications & Screening).
Centralized leasing: moving leasing work (inquiries, follow-up, tour scheduling, applications) from each property's office to a team working many properties from one queue, while site staff give tours and hand over keys (Leads, CRM, Tours & the Leasing Center).
Clause library: a library of versioned lease clauses with jurisdiction variants, from which a lease template version is compiled (The Lease).
Clawback: what happens to a concession on early termination or default (repaid in full, prorated by the unserved term, or forgiven), set from the signed addendum and computed by the platform (The Lease).
Common pricing algorithm: California AB 325's term for a pricing algorithm used by two or more persons that uses competitor data, public and nonpublic alike (Revenue Management & Pricing).
Common use of software: the holding in Gibson v. Cendyn Group, followed in Mach v. Yardi, that competitors using the same pricing software is not by itself an agreement (Revenue Management & Pricing).
Concession: value given to sign or renew (a free month, a rent discount, waived fees, a gift card), whose terms and conditions belong in the signed packet (The Lease).
Condition inspection: a dated, itemized record of every area and item in the unit, with photos, made at move-in (the baseline), before move-out, at move-out, or for make-ready and periodic checks (Move-In & Move-Out).
Conditional approval: an approval with typed conditions (an additional deposit, a guarantor, prepaid rent, a co-signer); when based on a report it is an adverse action and generates a notice (Applications & Screening).
Conditional incentive: compensation in exchange for reviews expressing a particular sentiment, a violation of the FTC review rule; an incentive for any honest review is not (Leads, CRM, Tours & the Leasing Center).
Conditional offer: in fair-chance jurisdictions, the written offer committing a unit after non-criminal screening, before which criminal history may not be checked (Applications & Screening).
Consumer reporting agency, consumer report: a tenant screening company, and its report including any risk score or recommendation, both governed by the Fair Credit Reporting Act (Applications & Screening).
Consumer Review Fairness Act (CRFA): the 2016 law voiding form-contract terms, a standard lease included, that restrict reviews, penalize them or claim the rights in review content, and making offering such a contract unlawful (Leads, CRM, Tours & the Leasing Center).
Consumer Reviews and Testimonials Rule (16 CFR Part 465): the FTC rule, effective October 21, 2024, barring fake reviews, sentiment-conditioned incentives, undisclosed insider reviews and review suppression (Leads, CRM, Tours & the Leasing Center).
Conversational message: a reply to a prospect who started the conversation, as opposed to a marketing drip to past inquirers, which carries marketing consent and opt-out rules (Leads, CRM, Tours & the Leasing Center).
Coordinating function: New York S.7882's term for software whose recommendations landlords may not use to set rents or lease terms; the law is preliminarily enjoined (Revenue Management & Pricing).
Countersignature: the landlord's agent signing last, for the landlord of record, after residents and guarantors, as a final check that the quote, screening decision and hold still stand (The Lease).
Criteria version: screening criteria as a published document and as evaluable data, approved, effective for a date range and scoped to a property or portfolio; an application binds to the version in force at submission (Applications & Screening).
Cross-property referral: a recorded event moving a household's interest to a sister property, rather than a new lead, so per-property metrics and owner marketing costs stay honest (Leads, CRM, Tours & the Leasing Center).
Deduction: a charge on the resident's ledger from the charge catalog, with cost evidence and photos, settled by applying the deposit (Move-In & Move-Out).
Deposit itemization deadline: the state deadline to return the deposit or account for deductions in writing, with the event that starts the clock, the evidence required and the penalty, stored as effective-dated rules data (Move-In & Move-Out).
Directory listing: the property's entry in map and business directories, whose name, address, phone, hours and website must match everywhere; one more publication of the property's facts (Listings, Websites & Marketing).
Document forensics: reading a pay stub's or bank statement's file metadata, fonts and structure for signs of editing, returning a finding per document (clean, edited, inconclusive) with the indicators (Applications & Screening).
ESIGN eviction-notice exclusion: federal e-signature law's rule that notices of default, eviction or the right to cure under a primary-residence rental agreement can't rely on electronic records alone (The Lease).
Executed document: the sealed lease PDF with the e-signature provider's certificate, stored write-once with its hash and delivered to every signer; it is the record (The Lease).
Exposure-driven spend: setting marketing budgets from the pricing model's exposure forecast, so pricing and marketing read one forecast and each budget records which one it used (Listings, Websites & Marketing).
Fair housing consistency: the leasing call scorecard section checking that the agent described availability, price, fees and criteria as the property's data says and avoided steering language (Leads, CRM, Tours & the Leasing Center).
Fair Housing Testing Program: the Justice Department program, established in 1991, that sends testers with no intent to rent posing as prospects; a tester is a guest card like any other (Leads, CRM, Tours & the Leasing Center).
Fair-chance law: a state or local rule limiting criminal history in screening: no arrests or sealed records, a lookback window, financial screening first, an individualized assessment and a chance to respond (Applications & Screening).
FCRA (Fair Credit Reporting Act): the federal law that makes a screening report a consumer report, with duties of accuracy, notices and disputes on both the agency and the landlord (Applications & Screening).
Fee terms: a property's effective-dated classification of each charge a prospect could face by obligation (mandatory, optional, conditional) and recurrence, which decides what goes in the advertised price (Listings, Websites & Marketing).
Final account statement: the household's last view of its ledger: every unpaid charge and deduction, the deposit and interest held, applied like a payment, and the resulting refund or balance due (Move-In & Move-Out).
Final Judgment (United States v. RealPage): the settlement resolving the United States' claims against RealPage, which expires seven years after entry and whose terms read as a design specification for a lawful pricing product (Revenue Management & Pricing).
First-touch source, lease-attributed source, self-reported source: the source of the earliest touch, set once when the guest card is created; the source credited when the lease is signed under a named, versioned model; and what the household says, kept as a separate field (Leads, CRM, Tours & the Leasing Center).
Foreign credit file: credit history from abroad translated into a US consumer report for applicants without an SSN or US file, with the same notices as any report (Applications & Screening).
Forwarding address: the address the household gives in writing for the deposit statement; in Texas the obligation to refund or itemize waits for it (Move-In & Move-Out).
Furnisher: anyone who supplies information to a consumer reporting agency; a landlord contributing rental history must not furnish known inaccuracies, must correct and update, flag disputes and investigate disputes forwarded by the agency (Applications & Screening).
Good cause eviction law: a law removing the landlord's right to simply not renew; New York's (Real Property Law Article 6-A) bars removing a covered tenant by failure to renew without good cause (The Lease).
Good funds: move-in money that can't be returned after keys are handed over, such as certified funds or a card, or ACH after settlement; a per-property policy (Move-In & Move-Out).
Good-faith estimate: a deduction stated as an estimate when repairs can't be finished before the deadline, with documentation due afterward where the state allows it (Move-In & Move-Out).
Guaranty: a separate written promise to answer for someone else's lease debt, stored as its own document, whose coverage, limit, duration and whose debt it covers are data the ledger and renewals read (The Lease).
Guest card: the record of a prospect household's interest in a property: who they are, how to reach them, what they want, where they came from and everything since; named after the paper card visitors filled in at the leasing office (Leads, CRM, Tours & the Leasing Center).
Holdover: a tenant staying after the term ends with no renewal and no notice; the lease stays current with the date the periodic (month-to-month) tenancy began, any premium as a new schedule, and periodic notice rules (The Lease).
Household's share (income test): running the income multiple against the portion of rent the household pays rather than the full rent, so voucher holders aren't failed on the subsidized part (Applications & Screening).
ILS (internet listing service): a rental listing network or apartment search site, the largest and a concentrated channel for apartment demand; ILSs charge per property, per lead or per lease (Listings, Websites & Marketing).
Individualized assessment: a review of a criminal record against the applicant's circumstances and any mitigating information, required before an adverse criminal decision in several jurisdictions (Applications & Screening).
Insider review: a review by an officer, manager, employee or agent (or solicited from relatives or staff) without clear disclosure of the relationship (Leads, CRM, Tours & the Leasing Center).
Inventory checklist: a state-required record of condition at the start or end of a tenancy, such as Michigan's commencement and termination inventory checklists or Washington's signed checklist, without which a deposit may not be held (Move-In & Move-Out).
Joint delegation: the DOJ and FTC position that competing landlords jointly delegating key aspects of pricing to a common algorithm is per se illegal even if they keep authority to deviate (Revenue Management & Pricing).
Landlord revert agreement: a utility arrangement under which service reverts to the owner's account when a resident closes theirs (Move-In & Move-Out).
Lead source: where a prospect came from: ILSs, the property and corporate website with its paid search and social, calls to a tracking number, walk-ins, resident referrals, apartment locators and the operator's other properties (Leads, CRM, Tours & the Leasing Center).
Lead-based paint disclosure, target housing: the federal disclosure each lease of target housing (built before 1978, with exclusions) must include, with the Lead Warning Statement, known hazards, records given and dated signatures (The Lease).
Lease packet: the base lease, the addenda that apply to this unit and household, required disclosures, any translation and, separately, any guaranty, each rendered from a template version; the packet as executed is the lease (The Lease).
Lease states: draft, out_for_signature, signed, current, notice_given, ended and cancelled, with transitions checked by one command; the "future resident" between signing and move-in is signed (The Lease).
Lease-term premium: the premium or discount on terms other than the 12-month reference, used mainly to steer the expiration month away from months that are hard to re-lease (Revenue Management & Pricing).
Leasing contact center: an outsourced answering service for leasing calls and email, often also taking after-hours maintenance calls, that must write to the same guest card through the platform's leasing API (Leads, CRM, Tours & the Leasing Center).
Listing: the marketable statement of what is for rent (a unit, a floor plan or a whole property) with its price, availability date, features, media and policies (Listings, Websites & Marketing).
Liveness check: a test that an identity selfie is a live person rather than a photo or replay, run with a match against the government ID's photo as a step-up when passive data checks disagree (Applications & Screening).
Local rent standard: under New York's Good Cause law, the lower of 5% plus the annual change in CPI or 10%; an increase above it is presumptively unreasonable (The Lease).
Market survey (call-around): staff phoning or emailing competing properties for current rents and concessions, distinct from reading their public websites (Revenue Management & Pricing).
Maximum possible accuracy: the FCRA standard for agency procedures; in tenant screening the hard part is matching name-only court records to the right applicant (Applications & Screening).
MDL 3071: the consolidated renter class actions over RealPage pricing software in the Middle District of Tennessee, where landlords settled and the claims against RealPage continue (Revenue Management & Pricing).
MITS format: the multifamily XML feed format some listing channels accept alongside their own schemas (Listings, Websites & Marketing).
Move-in readiness gate: the conditions that must all hold before keys go out (lease executed, unit ready, move-in funds paid, insurance verified, utilities in the resident's name, inspection scheduled), each computed from the records that prove it (Move-In & Move-Out).
No credit history: an outcome distinct from poor credit history, for which the criteria state the substitute (a larger lawful deposit, a guarantor, or prepaid rent where allowed) (Applications & Screening).
Normal wear and tear: deterioration from ordinary use, not deductible from a deposit in any state the chapter tabulates; each deduction must say what was damaged and why it isn't wear (Move-In & Move-Out).
Notice to vacate, nonrenewal: the household's notice ending the lease at term end or a periodic tenancy, and the landlord's notice not to renew, with any cause a good cause law requires (The Lease).
Offline conversion feedback: sending lease-funnel outcomes that happen off the ad platform back to it so it can bid toward them; limited to funnel events, sent with recorded consent, never screening outcomes or inferred characteristics (Listings, Websites & Marketing).
One-to-one consent rule: the FCC's 2023 rule requiring written consent to name a single seller, vacated by the Eleventh Circuit before it took effect; consent must still authorize the seller that calls (Leads, CRM, Tours & the Leasing Center).
Override: a person's decision to deviate from a price recommendation, one click with a reason; nothing in pricing, commissions or reports may penalize it (Revenue Management & Pricing).
Parallel pricing coordination: New Jersey's FAIR Act term reaching coordinators using shared nonpublic metrics, including manual workarounds (Revenue Management & Pricing).
Per-lead fee, per-lease fee: ILS billing models charging for each lead delivered or each lease claimed; each claim is matched to a guest card or disputed, never paid unchecked (Leads, CRM, Tours & the Leasing Center).
Permissible purpose: the FCRA basis for pulling a report (the consumer's written instructions, or a legitimate business need in a transaction the consumer initiated), recorded per member with the consent version it rests on (Applications & Screening).
Pet screening: collecting a profile per animal (species, breed, weight, vaccination and license records, the owner's history) for pets, kept separate from the assistance animal path, which is a reasonable accommodation (Applications & Screening).
Pooled nonpublic data: competitors' executed rents, lease terms, occupancy and traffic combined in a pricing product; the core of every antitrust case and barred at runtime by the Final Judgment and most of the laws (Revenue Management & Pricing).
Portable report: a screening report the applicant already paid for, which some jurisdictions require landlords to accept within an age limit, waiving the application fee (Applications & Screening).
Possession returned: the date keys and credentials come back, which usually starts the deposit clock rather than the lease end date (Move-In & Move-Out).
Pre-move-out inspection: an inspection before the household leaves, with an itemized statement of proposed deductions they can cure; some states give tenants a right to one (Move-In & Move-Out).
Quote: the unit of pricing: one unit, one lease term, one move-in date, one amount, valid until a stated time; applications and leases carry its ID (Revenue Management & Pricing).
Reason code: a coded decision reason in the criteria version, read identically by the notice, the applicant portal and the audit (Applications & Screening).
Reinvestigation: the agency's free investigation of a disputed report, with deadlines for notifying the furnisher and correcting or deleting what is inaccurate, incomplete or unverifiable (Applications & Screening).
Release (of a leaseholder): a signed amendment ending a departing roommate's liability on a joint lease, effective on its date rather than the day they moved out (The Lease).
Renewal: a new lease row pointing at the lease it renews: same unit and household, new term, price, packet and signatures, carrying the renewal offer it accepted (The Lease).
Renewal offer: a per-household price for staying, weighed against the cost of a turn, clamped to any legal cap and sent before the notice period begins; often a menu of terms, one offer row each (Revenue Management & Pricing).
Rent limit: the computed legal maximum for a lease's next increase, from the rent history in the lookback window, the published index and the rule version; the engine clamps a recommendation to it and blocks overrides above it (Revenue Management & Pricing).
Renter-centric CRM, property-centric CRM: a CRM that keeps one record per renter across the operator's portfolio, versus one that creates a lead per property the household contacts (Leads, CRM, Tours & the Leasing Center).
Representative media: photos or tours of a model or a sister unit rather than the specific unit, tagged as such and never shown as the unit itself (Listings, Websites & Marketing).
Resident self-inspection: a resident walking the unit and capturing the condition record in an app; valid evidence from a different actor, recorded per photo (Move-In & Move-Out).
Response parity: measuring response time and follow-up by property, agent, channel and language to show every inquiry got the same treatment, without recording prospects' protected traits (Leads, CRM, Tours & the Leasing Center).
Revenue management: software that produces a recommended asking rent per unit, lease term and move-in date, premiums or discounts that steer lease expirations, and a renewal offer per household (Revenue Management & Pricing).
Review gating: asking for a rating first and sending only happy residents to a public review site; not named in the FTC rule, but the FTC says it could violate the FTC Act and Google forbids it (Leads, CRM, Tours & the Leasing Center).
Review suppression: preventing or removing a review by unfounded legal threats, intimidation or false accusations, or hiding reviews by rating while implying all are shown; withholding by criteria applied equally to all reviews is allowed (Leads, CRM, Tours & the Leasing Center).
Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees: the FTC's general total-price rule, effective May 12, 2025, covering short-term lodging and live-event tickets but not long-term rental housing (Listings, Websites & Marketing).
Runtime operation: in the Final Judgment, the generation of a price for a floor plan or unit, which may use no competing properties' nonpublic data, including in its ceiling and floor (Revenue Management & Pricing).
Screening score: a model predicting lease performance; part of the consumer report, a fair housing practice of the operator who uses it, and decision support rather than a decision-maker (Applications & Screening).
Section 3604(c): the Fair Housing Act provision making it unlawful to make, print or publish a notice, statement or advertisement indicating a preference, limitation or discrimination based on a protected characteristic; every listing, ad, page and post is covered (Listings, Websites & Marketing).
Self-guided tour: a prospect entering a vacant unit or model without staff, after booking a window and passing an ID-and-selfie check, with access valid for that window only (Leads, CRM, Tours & the Leasing Center).
SEO, GEO, AEO (search, generative and answer engine optimization): publishing accurate, structured, current facts at stable URLs so search engines and AI assistants can parse and quote them (Listings, Websites & Marketing).
Seven-year rule: the FCRA bar on reporting most adverse items older than seven years, including civil suits such as eviction filings, with criminal convictions excepted (Applications & Screening).
Sold-out guardrail: the rule that raises prices when a floor plan is full, which under the Final Judgment may not use competitor data (Revenue Management & Pricing).
Special ad category (housing): the ad platforms' treatment of housing ads, under which Google bars targeting housing ads in the US and Canada by age, gender, marital or parental status, or by ZIP code (Listings, Websites & Marketing).
Structured data: machine-readable markup of the property's facts, such as schema.org's ApartmentComplex and FloorPlan types, generated from the same price computation as the visible page (Listings, Websites & Marketing).
Surrogate data: another owner's nonpublic data used for a property with under two years of its own history and no comparable property, only from a different CBSA and never the same surrogate for different owners in one CBSA (Revenue Management & Pricing).
Survivor termination: a state-law right for victims of domestic violence and related crimes to end a lease early with written notice and documentation (The Lease).
Symmetric bounds: prices may go below the floor by the same percentage they may exceed the ceiling, with the landlord setting that one band percentage (Revenue Management & Pricing).
Syndication (listings): sending listings from the platform to channels, each with its own format and rules, recording what each channel accepted and pulling back leads; built as an outbox of change events per listing rather than a nightly export (Listings, Websites & Marketing).
Synthetic identity: an invented person built from a real SSN (often a child's or a dormant one) and a made-up name, with a thin but clean credit file (Applications & Screening).
Tenant Protection Act: California's statewide cap (Civil Code 1947.12) on increases over any 12 months, with exemptions; the landlord sets the initial rent at turnover (Revenue Management & Pricing).
Total monthly price (all-in price): the advertised monthly price including every fixed mandatory recurring charge, with every other fee disclosed with its amount and purpose before any money is taken; the shape federal enforcement and state law are converging on (Listings, Websites & Marketing).
Tour access grant: the record of which tour, person, lock and window a self-guided tour credential covered, issued after which verification, and when it was used and revoked; it never holds the code (Leads, CRM, Tours & the Leasing Center).
Tracking number: a distinct phone number published per listing, website, map listing or print piece, so a call is attributed to a source and a property before anyone answers; its assignment is effective-dated (Leads, CRM, Tours & the Leasing Center).
Unclaimed refund: a deposit refund never cashed, still the household's money and, after the state's dormancy period, reported and remitted as unclaimed property (Move-In & Move-Out).
Unit transfer: a household moving to another unit at the same or a sister property: the old lease ends, a new one starts with a link to it, and the deposit can carry over by balanced entries (Move-In & Move-Out).
Unit-level listing, floor-plan listing: advertising individual units with their own price and date, or a floor plan with a "from" price that is a query over the quotes for its units, terms and dates (Listings, Websites & Marketing).
Upfront, recurring and digital concessions: a single credit on a date; a negative charge schedule beside the rent for some or all of the term; and rewards outside the rent, such as gift cards or points, that don't change the lease's rent (The Lease).
Useful-life proration: charging only the share of a replacement's cost equal to the item's remaining useful life over its total life, from the install date in the asset register (Move-In & Move-Out).
Utility transfer: starting the resident's direct utility account on the move-in date and stopping the owner's vacant-unit account the same day, and the reverse at move-out (Move-In & Move-Out).
Variance reduction system: the delivery system Meta built under its June 2022 settlement with the Justice Department after retiring Special Ad Audiences for housing (Listings, Websites & Marketing).
Virtual tour: either live (an agent on video walking the unit, recorded as a tour) or recorded (a 3D or video walkthrough on the listing, where viewing is a touch, not a tour) (Leads, CRM, Tours & the Leasing Center).

Abandonment: a household leaving without returning possession; when it was determined, and on what evidence, sets the deposit deadline (Move-In & Move-Out).
Accessibility overlay: a script that claims to make a site accessible on load without changing the underlying markup a screen reader reads; it doesn't fix the site (Listings, Websites & Marketing).
Addendum: a document attached to the lease by rule (pets, parking, a lead or flood disclosure), recording the rule and version that required it (The Lease).
Adverse action notice: the notice owed when a decision rests in whole or part on a consumer report, including denial, requiring a co-signer or a larger deposit; it names the agency, says the agency didn't decide, states the consumer's rights and any credit score used (Applications & Screening).
Advertised price snapshot: an append-only record of the price as shown on one channel over a time range: base rent, total monthly price, each component and its treatment, the assumed term and move-in date, the concession, the rule version and a payload hash (Listings, Websites & Marketing).
Agent-led tour: a tour appointment with a person, booked on the property's calendar in its time zone, with an outcome the agent records (toured, no-show, cancelled, rescheduled) (Leads, CRM, Tours & the Leasing Center).
AI call scoring: a model that scores recorded calls, for example for "intent to rent"; if the score decides who gets a callback first it is an automated decision about people (Leads, CRM, Tours & the Leasing Center).
AI leasing agent: software that answers prospects across chat, text, email and voice, schedules tours and says it's an AI; availability, price, fees and policies come from tools reading the property's data, never improvised (Leads, CRM, Tours & the Leasing Center).
Amenity premium: an adjustment to a floor plan's base price for a unit's view, floor, renovation level or position, stored as data on the unit (Revenue Management & Pricing).
Application: a household's request to lease a specific unit at a quoted rent, term and move-in date, with every adult and guarantor a member with their own consent, reports and result; minors are listed as occupants and never screened (Applications & Screening).
Application fee: the per-member fee collected before any report is ordered, computed from the jurisdiction's rule version with its cap, waiver conditions, receipt contents and refund deadline (Applications & Screening).
Asking rent, executed rent: what a property publishes, versus what it actually agreed with its concession and term; competitors' executed rents are the pooled data the antitrust cases are about (Revenue Management & Pricing).
Association form: a lease form published and revised by an association; the operator adopts each revision and records its form number and revision as the template's source (The Lease).
Auto-accept: a feature that applies price recommendations automatically; under the Final Judgment each licensee or user must configure it individually, and it belongs to a named person, never a vendor default (Revenue Management & Pricing).
Balance due: a negative final statement, a receivable from a former resident that gets a demand, a payment window and then the collections path (Move-In & Move-Out).
BIPA (Biometric Information Privacy Act): Illinois' law requiring consent before collecting or disclosing biometric identifiers, timely destruction, and a private right of action; the strictest state law and the one that drives design (Applications & Screening).
Borrowed identity: a real person's identity used by someone else applying; the ID-and-selfie match is the check (Applications & Screening).
Centralized leasing: moving leasing work (inquiries, follow-up, tour scheduling, applications) from each property's office to a team working many properties from one queue, while site staff give tours and hand over keys (Leads, CRM, Tours & the Leasing Center).
Clause library: a library of versioned lease clauses with jurisdiction variants, from which a lease template version is compiled (The Lease).
Clawback: what happens to a concession on early termination or default (repaid in full, prorated by the unserved term, or forgiven), set from the signed addendum and computed by the platform (The Lease).
Common pricing algorithm: California AB 325's term for a pricing algorithm used by two or more persons that uses competitor data, public and nonpublic alike (Revenue Management & Pricing).
Common use of software: the holding in Gibson v. Cendyn Group, followed in Mach v. Yardi, that competitors using the same pricing software is not by itself an agreement (Revenue Management & Pricing).
Concession: value given to sign or renew (a free month, a rent discount, waived fees, a gift card), whose terms and conditions belong in the signed packet (The Lease).
Condition inspection: a dated, itemized record of every area and item in the unit, with photos, made at move-in (the baseline), before move-out, at move-out, or for make-ready and periodic checks (Move-In & Move-Out).
Conditional approval: an approval with typed conditions (an additional deposit, a guarantor, prepaid rent, a co-signer); when based on a report it is an adverse action and generates a notice (Applications & Screening).
Conditional incentive: compensation in exchange for reviews expressing a particular sentiment, a violation of the FTC review rule; an incentive for any honest review is not (Leads, CRM, Tours & the Leasing Center).
Conditional offer: in fair-chance jurisdictions, the written offer committing a unit after non-criminal screening, before which criminal history may not be checked (Applications & Screening).
Consumer reporting agency, consumer report: a tenant screening company, and its report including any risk score or recommendation, both governed by the Fair Credit Reporting Act (Applications & Screening).
Consumer Review Fairness Act (CRFA): the 2016 law voiding form-contract terms, a standard lease included, that restrict reviews, penalize them or claim the rights in review content, and making offering such a contract unlawful (Leads, CRM, Tours & the Leasing Center).
Consumer Reviews and Testimonials Rule (16 CFR Part 465): the FTC rule, effective October 21, 2024, barring fake reviews, sentiment-conditioned incentives, undisclosed insider reviews and review suppression (Leads, CRM, Tours & the Leasing Center).
Conversational message: a reply to a prospect who started the conversation, as opposed to a marketing drip to past inquirers, which carries marketing consent and opt-out rules (Leads, CRM, Tours & the Leasing Center).
Coordinating function: New York S.7882's term for software whose recommendations landlords may not use to set rents or lease terms; the law is preliminarily enjoined (Revenue Management & Pricing).
Countersignature: the landlord's agent signing last, for the landlord of record, after residents and guarantors, as a final check that the quote, screening decision and hold still stand (The Lease).
Criteria version: screening criteria as a published document and as evaluable data, approved, effective for a date range and scoped to a property or portfolio; an application binds to the version in force at submission (Applications & Screening).
Cross-property referral: a recorded event moving a household's interest to a sister property, rather than a new lead, so per-property metrics and owner marketing costs stay honest (Leads, CRM, Tours & the Leasing Center).
Deduction: a charge on the resident's ledger from the charge catalog, with cost evidence and photos, settled by applying the deposit (Move-In & Move-Out).
Deposit itemization deadline: the state deadline to return the deposit or account for deductions in writing, with the event that starts the clock, the evidence required and the penalty, stored as effective-dated rules data (Move-In & Move-Out).
Directory listing: the property's entry in map and business directories, whose name, address, phone, hours and website must match everywhere; one more publication of the property's facts (Listings, Websites & Marketing).
Document forensics: reading a pay stub's or bank statement's file metadata, fonts and structure for signs of editing, returning a finding per document (clean, edited, inconclusive) with the indicators (Applications & Screening).
ESIGN eviction-notice exclusion: federal e-signature law's rule that notices of default, eviction or the right to cure under a primary-residence rental agreement can't rely on electronic records alone (The Lease).
Executed document: the sealed lease PDF with the e-signature provider's certificate, stored write-once with its hash and delivered to every signer; it is the record (The Lease).
Exposure-driven spend: setting marketing budgets from the pricing model's exposure forecast, so pricing and marketing read one forecast and each budget records which one it used (Listings, Websites & Marketing).
Fair housing consistency: the leasing call scorecard section checking that the agent described availability, price, fees and criteria as the property's data says and avoided steering language (Leads, CRM, Tours & the Leasing Center).
Fair Housing Testing Program: the Justice Department program, established in 1991, that sends testers with no intent to rent posing as prospects; a tester is a guest card like any other (Leads, CRM, Tours & the Leasing Center).
Fair-chance law: a state or local rule limiting criminal history in screening: no arrests or sealed records, a lookback window, financial screening first, an individualized assessment and a chance to respond (Applications & Screening).
FCRA (Fair Credit Reporting Act): the federal law that makes a screening report a consumer report, with duties of accuracy, notices and disputes on both the agency and the landlord (Applications & Screening).
Fee terms: a property's effective-dated classification of each charge a prospect could face by obligation (mandatory, optional, conditional) and recurrence, which decides what goes in the advertised price (Listings, Websites & Marketing).
Final account statement: the household's last view of its ledger: every unpaid charge and deduction, the deposit and interest held, applied like a payment, and the resulting refund or balance due (Move-In & Move-Out).
Final Judgment (United States v. RealPage): the settlement resolving the United States' claims against RealPage, which expires seven years after entry and whose terms read as a design specification for a lawful pricing product (Revenue Management & Pricing).
First-touch source, lease-attributed source, self-reported source: the source of the earliest touch, set once when the guest card is created; the source credited when the lease is signed under a named, versioned model; and what the household says, kept as a separate field (Leads, CRM, Tours & the Leasing Center).
Foreign credit file: credit history from abroad translated into a US consumer report for applicants without an SSN or US file, with the same notices as any report (Applications & Screening).
Forwarding address: the address the household gives in writing for the deposit statement; in Texas the obligation to refund or itemize waits for it (Move-In & Move-Out).
Furnisher: anyone who supplies information to a consumer reporting agency; a landlord contributing rental history must not furnish known inaccuracies, must correct and update, flag disputes and investigate disputes forwarded by the agency (Applications & Screening).
Good cause eviction law: a law removing the landlord's right to simply not renew; New York's (Real Property Law Article 6-A) bars removing a covered tenant by failure to renew without good cause (The Lease).
Good funds: move-in money that can't be returned after keys are handed over, such as certified funds or a card, or ACH after settlement; a per-property policy (Move-In & Move-Out).
Good-faith estimate: a deduction stated as an estimate when repairs can't be finished before the deadline, with documentation due afterward where the state allows it (Move-In & Move-Out).
Guaranty: a separate written promise to answer for someone else's lease debt, stored as its own document, whose coverage, limit, duration and whose debt it covers are data the ledger and renewals read (The Lease).
Guest card: the record of a prospect household's interest in a property: who they are, how to reach them, what they want, where they came from and everything since; named after the paper card visitors filled in at the leasing office (Leads, CRM, Tours & the Leasing Center).
Holdover: a tenant staying after the term ends with no renewal and no notice; the lease stays current with the date the periodic (month-to-month) tenancy began, any premium as a new schedule, and periodic notice rules (The Lease).
Household's share (income test): running the income multiple against the portion of rent the household pays rather than the full rent, so voucher holders aren't failed on the subsidized part (Applications & Screening).
ILS (internet listing service): a rental listing network or apartment search site, the largest and a concentrated channel for apartment demand; ILSs charge per property, per lead or per lease (Listings, Websites & Marketing).
Individualized assessment: a review of a criminal record against the applicant's circumstances and any mitigating information, required before an adverse criminal decision in several jurisdictions (Applications & Screening).
Insider review: a review by an officer, manager, employee or agent (or solicited from relatives or staff) without clear disclosure of the relationship (Leads, CRM, Tours & the Leasing Center).
Inventory checklist: a state-required record of condition at the start or end of a tenancy, such as Michigan's commencement and termination inventory checklists or Washington's signed checklist, without which a deposit may not be held (Move-In & Move-Out).
Joint delegation: the DOJ and FTC position that competing landlords jointly delegating key aspects of pricing to a common algorithm is per se illegal even if they keep authority to deviate (Revenue Management & Pricing).
Landlord revert agreement: a utility arrangement under which service reverts to the owner's account when a resident closes theirs (Move-In & Move-Out).
Lead source: where a prospect came from: ILSs, the property and corporate website with its paid search and social, calls to a tracking number, walk-ins, resident referrals, apartment locators and the operator's other properties (Leads, CRM, Tours & the Leasing Center).
Lead-based paint disclosure, target housing: the federal disclosure each lease of target housing (built before 1978, with exclusions) must include, with the Lead Warning Statement, known hazards, records given and dated signatures (The Lease).
Lease packet: the base lease, the addenda that apply to this unit and household, required disclosures, any translation and, separately, any guaranty, each rendered from a template version; the packet as executed is the lease (The Lease).
Lease states: draft, out_for_signature, signed, current, notice_given, ended and cancelled, with transitions checked by one command; the "future resident" between signing and move-in is signed (The Lease).
Lease-term premium: the premium or discount on terms other than the 12-month reference, used mainly to steer the expiration month away from months that are hard to re-lease (Revenue Management & Pricing).
Leasing contact center: an outsourced answering service for leasing calls and email, often also taking after-hours maintenance calls, that must write to the same guest card through the platform's leasing API (Leads, CRM, Tours & the Leasing Center).
Listing: the marketable statement of what is for rent (a unit, a floor plan or a whole property) with its price, availability date, features, media and policies (Listings, Websites & Marketing).
Liveness check: a test that an identity selfie is a live person rather than a photo or replay, run with a match against the government ID's photo as a step-up when passive data checks disagree (Applications & Screening).
Local rent standard: under New York's Good Cause law, the lower of 5% plus the annual change in CPI or 10%; an increase above it is presumptively unreasonable (The Lease).
Market survey (call-around): staff phoning or emailing competing properties for current rents and concessions, distinct from reading their public websites (Revenue Management & Pricing).
Maximum possible accuracy: the FCRA standard for agency procedures; in tenant screening the hard part is matching name-only court records to the right applicant (Applications & Screening).
MDL 3071: the consolidated renter class actions over RealPage pricing software in the Middle District of Tennessee, where landlords settled and the claims against RealPage continue (Revenue Management & Pricing).
MITS format: the multifamily XML feed format some listing channels accept alongside their own schemas (Listings, Websites & Marketing).
Move-in readiness gate: the conditions that must all hold before keys go out (lease executed, unit ready, move-in funds paid, insurance verified, utilities in the resident's name, inspection scheduled), each computed from the records that prove it (Move-In & Move-Out).
No credit history: an outcome distinct from poor credit history, for which the criteria state the substitute (a larger lawful deposit, a guarantor, or prepaid rent where allowed) (Applications & Screening).
Normal wear and tear: deterioration from ordinary use, not deductible from a deposit in any state the chapter tabulates; each deduction must say what was damaged and why it isn't wear (Move-In & Move-Out).
Notice to vacate, nonrenewal: the household's notice ending the lease at term end or a periodic tenancy, and the landlord's notice not to renew, with any cause a good cause law requires (The Lease).
Offline conversion feedback: sending lease-funnel outcomes that happen off the ad platform back to it so it can bid toward them; limited to funnel events, sent with recorded consent, never screening outcomes or inferred characteristics (Listings, Websites & Marketing).
One-to-one consent rule: the FCC's 2023 rule requiring written consent to name a single seller, vacated by the Eleventh Circuit before it took effect; consent must still authorize the seller that calls (Leads, CRM, Tours & the Leasing Center).
Override: a person's decision to deviate from a price recommendation, one click with a reason; nothing in pricing, commissions or reports may penalize it (Revenue Management & Pricing).
Parallel pricing coordination: New Jersey's FAIR Act term reaching coordinators using shared nonpublic metrics, including manual workarounds (Revenue Management & Pricing).
Per-lead fee, per-lease fee: ILS billing models charging for each lead delivered or each lease claimed; each claim is matched to a guest card or disputed, never paid unchecked (Leads, CRM, Tours & the Leasing Center).
Permissible purpose: the FCRA basis for pulling a report (the consumer's written instructions, or a legitimate business need in a transaction the consumer initiated), recorded per member with the consent version it rests on (Applications & Screening).
Pet screening: collecting a profile per animal (species, breed, weight, vaccination and license records, the owner's history) for pets, kept separate from the assistance animal path, which is a reasonable accommodation (Applications & Screening).
Pooled nonpublic data: competitors' executed rents, lease terms, occupancy and traffic combined in a pricing product; the core of every antitrust case and barred at runtime by the Final Judgment and most of the laws (Revenue Management & Pricing).
Portable report: a screening report the applicant already paid for, which some jurisdictions require landlords to accept within an age limit, waiving the application fee (Applications & Screening).
Possession returned: the date keys and credentials come back, which usually starts the deposit clock rather than the lease end date (Move-In & Move-Out).
Pre-move-out inspection: an inspection before the household leaves, with an itemized statement of proposed deductions they can cure; some states give tenants a right to one (Move-In & Move-Out).
Quote: the unit of pricing: one unit, one lease term, one move-in date, one amount, valid until a stated time; applications and leases carry its ID (Revenue Management & Pricing).
Reason code: a coded decision reason in the criteria version, read identically by the notice, the applicant portal and the audit (Applications & Screening).
Reinvestigation: the agency's free investigation of a disputed report, with deadlines for notifying the furnisher and correcting or deleting what is inaccurate, incomplete or unverifiable (Applications & Screening).
Release (of a leaseholder): a signed amendment ending a departing roommate's liability on a joint lease, effective on its date rather than the day they moved out (The Lease).
Renewal: a new lease row pointing at the lease it renews: same unit and household, new term, price, packet and signatures, carrying the renewal offer it accepted (The Lease).
Renewal offer: a per-household price for staying, weighed against the cost of a turn, clamped to any legal cap and sent before the notice period begins; often a menu of terms, one offer row each (Revenue Management & Pricing).
Rent limit: the computed legal maximum for a lease's next increase, from the rent history in the lookback window, the published index and the rule version; the engine clamps a recommendation to it and blocks overrides above it (Revenue Management & Pricing).
Renter-centric CRM, property-centric CRM: a CRM that keeps one record per renter across the operator's portfolio, versus one that creates a lead per property the household contacts (Leads, CRM, Tours & the Leasing Center).
Representative media: photos or tours of a model or a sister unit rather than the specific unit, tagged as such and never shown as the unit itself (Listings, Websites & Marketing).
Resident self-inspection: a resident walking the unit and capturing the condition record in an app; valid evidence from a different actor, recorded per photo (Move-In & Move-Out).
Response parity: measuring response time and follow-up by property, agent, channel and language to show every inquiry got the same treatment, without recording prospects' protected traits (Leads, CRM, Tours & the Leasing Center).
Revenue management: software that produces a recommended asking rent per unit, lease term and move-in date, premiums or discounts that steer lease expirations, and a renewal offer per household (Revenue Management & Pricing).
Review gating: asking for a rating first and sending only happy residents to a public review site; not named in the FTC rule, but the FTC says it could violate the FTC Act and Google forbids it (Leads, CRM, Tours & the Leasing Center).
Review suppression: preventing or removing a review by unfounded legal threats, intimidation or false accusations, or hiding reviews by rating while implying all are shown; withholding by criteria applied equally to all reviews is allowed (Leads, CRM, Tours & the Leasing Center).
Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees: the FTC's general total-price rule, effective May 12, 2025, covering short-term lodging and live-event tickets but not long-term rental housing (Listings, Websites & Marketing).
Runtime operation: in the Final Judgment, the generation of a price for a floor plan or unit, which may use no competing properties' nonpublic data, including in its ceiling and floor (Revenue Management & Pricing).
Screening score: a model predicting lease performance; part of the consumer report, a fair housing practice of the operator who uses it, and decision support rather than a decision-maker (Applications & Screening).
Section 3604(c): the Fair Housing Act provision making it unlawful to make, print or publish a notice, statement or advertisement indicating a preference, limitation or discrimination based on a protected characteristic; every listing, ad, page and post is covered (Listings, Websites & Marketing).
Self-guided tour: a prospect entering a vacant unit or model without staff, after booking a window and passing an ID-and-selfie check, with access valid for that window only (Leads, CRM, Tours & the Leasing Center).
SEO, GEO, AEO (search, generative and answer engine optimization): publishing accurate, structured, current facts at stable URLs so search engines and AI assistants can parse and quote them (Listings, Websites & Marketing).
Seven-year rule: the FCRA bar on reporting most adverse items older than seven years, including civil suits such as eviction filings, with criminal convictions excepted (Applications & Screening).
Sold-out guardrail: the rule that raises prices when a floor plan is full, which under the Final Judgment may not use competitor data (Revenue Management & Pricing).
Special ad category (housing): the ad platforms' treatment of housing ads, under which Google bars targeting housing ads in the US and Canada by age, gender, marital or parental status, or by ZIP code (Listings, Websites & Marketing).
Structured data: machine-readable markup of the property's facts, such as schema.org's ApartmentComplex and FloorPlan types, generated from the same price computation as the visible page (Listings, Websites & Marketing).
Surrogate data: another owner's nonpublic data used for a property with under two years of its own history and no comparable property, only from a different CBSA and never the same surrogate for different owners in one CBSA (Revenue Management & Pricing).
Survivor termination: a state-law right for victims of domestic violence and related crimes to end a lease early with written notice and documentation (The Lease).
Symmetric bounds: prices may go below the floor by the same percentage they may exceed the ceiling, with the landlord setting that one band percentage (Revenue Management & Pricing).
Syndication (listings): sending listings from the platform to channels, each with its own format and rules, recording what each channel accepted and pulling back leads; built as an outbox of change events per listing rather than a nightly export (Listings, Websites & Marketing).
Synthetic identity: an invented person built from a real SSN (often a child's or a dormant one) and a made-up name, with a thin but clean credit file (Applications & Screening).
Tenant Protection Act: California's statewide cap (Civil Code 1947.12) on increases over any 12 months, with exemptions; the landlord sets the initial rent at turnover (Revenue Management & Pricing).
Total monthly price (all-in price): the advertised monthly price including every fixed mandatory recurring charge, with every other fee disclosed with its amount and purpose before any money is taken; the shape federal enforcement and state law are converging on (Listings, Websites & Marketing).
Tour access grant: the record of which tour, person, lock and window a self-guided tour credential covered, issued after which verification, and when it was used and revoked; it never holds the code (Leads, CRM, Tours & the Leasing Center).
Tracking number: a distinct phone number published per listing, website, map listing or print piece, so a call is attributed to a source and a property before anyone answers; its assignment is effective-dated (Leads, CRM, Tours & the Leasing Center).
Unclaimed refund: a deposit refund never cashed, still the household's money and, after the state's dormancy period, reported and remitted as unclaimed property (Move-In & Move-Out).
Unit transfer: a household moving to another unit at the same or a sister property: the old lease ends, a new one starts with a link to it, and the deposit can carry over by balanced entries (Move-In & Move-Out).
Unit-level listing, floor-plan listing: advertising individual units with their own price and date, or a floor plan with a "from" price that is a query over the quotes for its units, terms and dates (Listings, Websites & Marketing).
Upfront, recurring and digital concessions: a single credit on a date; a negative charge schedule beside the rent for some or all of the term; and rewards outside the rent, such as gift cards or points, that don't change the lease's rent (The Lease).
Useful-life proration: charging only the share of a replacement's cost equal to the item's remaining useful life over its total life, from the install date in the asset register (Move-In & Move-Out).
Utility transfer: starting the resident's direct utility account on the move-in date and stopping the owner's vacant-unit account the same day, and the reverse at move-out (Move-In & Move-Out).
Variance reduction system: the delivery system Meta built under its June 2022 settlement with the Justice Department after retiring Special Ad Audiences for housing (Listings, Websites & Marketing).
Virtual tour: either live (an agent on video walking the unit, recorded as a tour) or recorded (a 3D or video walkthrough on the listing, where viewing is a touch, not a tour) (Leads, CRM, Tours & the Leasing Center).