Rent and Resident Money Glossary · Property Tech

Abatement (HAP): stopping HAP payments to a landlord when a voucher unit fails inspection and isn't repaired in time (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
Aged receivables (aging): the report of open charges by age (current, 30, 60, 90 days), computed from open charges and their due dates rather than stored in a column, which is why payment application order changes it (Charges & Resident Ledgers).
Agent of payee (collection agent): a model where the platform collects rent as the landlord's agent under a written agreement and the resident's obligation ends on the agent's receipt, relying on the agent-of-payee exemption where a state recognizes it (Collecting Rent).
Ancillary agreement: the record of one product line's contract and economics: counterparty, what's sold, who sells and pays, revenue terms, exclusivity and the disclosure text residents see (Resident Financial Products & Ancillary Revenue).
Automatic stay: the halt a bankruptcy petition imposes from the moment it's filed, which must stop the eviction, late fees, autopay retries and placements until counsel decides (Delinquency, Collections & Eviction).
Autopay: recurring ACH debits or stored-card payments whose authorization covers the balance due with notice of varying amounts; it stops on move-out and pauses on a payment block (Collecting Rent).
Average income test: the tax credit set-aside where the designated income limits of at least 40% of units average no more than 60% of area median income (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
Benchmarking (energy): annual reporting of a building's energy use to a city or state, commonly through ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager, tracked as a calendar of obligations per building (Utilities & Energy).
BEPS (building performance standards): laws requiring buildings to meet limits on energy use or emissions, beyond reporting it; New York City's Local Law 97 and Washington's Clean Buildings Performance Standard are examples (Utilities & Energy).
Blanket coverage: a master policy that enrolls every unit, with every resident paying through a scheduled charge or rent, making it a mandatory recurring charge in the advertised total (Insurance, Deposits & Guarantees).
Breakage (points): the accounting for points and gift-card-like concessions never redeemed; unredeemed value is a liability until used or expired, with expiry and unclaimed-property rules varying by state (Resident Financial Products & Ancillary Revenue).
Bulk agreement (bulk internet): an owner's contract with a provider to serve every unit at a discounted bulk rate, recovered through a monthly technology fee to residents, with the margin as ancillary income (Resident Financial Products & Ancillary Revenue).
CARES Act notice: the 30-day notice to vacate required before a nonpayment eviction at properties in covered federal housing programs or with federally backed mortgage loans (Delinquency, Collections & Eviction).
Cash network (rent): retail bill pay where a validation callback checks the lease's payment acceptance before the cashier takes the money (Collecting Rent).
Certification (household): a household's eligibility and rent computed at a point in time, signed and kept: move-in, annual recertification, interim, unit transfer, gross rent change or termination; immutable, with corrections as new certifications (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
Collection arrangement: the per-property, effective-dated record of where rent sits in transit (direct settlement, licensed transmitter, agent of payee or sponsor bank FBO account), the account it settles to, who bears returns and the contract that grants the authority (Collecting Rent).
Collection placement: sending a post-move-out balance to a collection agency with a file (identity, last address, itemized balance, lease, final account statement, disputes), with a return path for payments, disputes, recalls and closures (Delinquency, Collections & Eviction).
Contingent commission: an insurance agency's commission from a carrier that depends partly on claims experience at the properties, a reason to watch who decides whether to file a claim (Insurance, Deposits & Guarantees).
Convenience fee: a fee for paying rent a particular way, regulated by card network rules, general surcharge law and landlord law; a fee the platform charges never touches the resident ledger, and one the landlord charges always does (Collecting Rent).
Counts as rent: a charge code's flag for whether a charge is rent for legal purposes (notices, application order, eviction for nonpayment), separate from its accounting category; it's a default the lease and jurisdiction can override (Charges & Resident Ledgers).
CROA (Credit Repair Organizations Act): the federal law defining a credit repair organization as anyone selling a service to improve a consumer's credit record, history or rating, and forbidding charging for it before it's fully performed; why credit-building fees billed in advance are a question for counsel (Resident Financial Products & Ancillary Revenue).
Delinquency case: one record per lease per delinquency episode, with a stage and holds that every action (notices, filings, late fees, autopay, outreach, placements) checks before it runs (Delinquency, Collections & Eviction).
Deposit alternative: a product that replaces a cash deposit: a surety bond, an insurance policy, a deposit waiver fee, or a payment authorization or letter of credit; each leaves the resident owing for damage to a different degree (Insurance, Deposits & Guarantees).
Deposit alternative claim: the move-out itemization a property submits to a deposit alternative provider, which pays and, depending on the structure, pursues the resident; the resident ledger shows its payment as a third-party payment (Insurance, Deposits & Guarantees).
Deposit cap: a jurisdiction's limit on security demanded; California counts any charge imposed at the start of a tenancy for damage or default as security whatever it's called, so the cap is checked at lease generation across every code that counts (Insurance, Deposits & Guarantees).
Deposit interest: interest a jurisdiction requires on a held deposit, accrued per deposit at the account's rate less any allowed administrative fee, then paid, credited to rent or returned at move-out (Insurance, Deposits & Guarantees).
Deposit waiver: a deposit alternative where the resident pays a monthly fee with no insurance behind it, and the owner waives the deposit and pursues the resident directly for damage (Insurance, Deposits & Guarantees).
Direct account (utilities): a resident holding their own account with the utility, so nothing posts to the resident ledger (Utilities & Energy).
Door fee: a payment from a provider to a building owner for the right to market in the building or access its wiring, under a marketing and access agreement (Resident Financial Products & Ancillary Revenue).
EIV (Enterprise Income Verification): HUD's system that checks reported income for tenants in HUD rental assistance programs (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager: EPA's free benchmarking tool, which compares a building's energy use with its history and similar buildings and scores eligible buildings 1 to 100 (Utilities & Energy).
Enrollment (resident product): a resident's participation in a product, with consent evidence (the offer version and price shown, the channel, the act of consent) rather than a flag (Resident Financial Products & Ancillary Revenue).
Eviction filing: the court case a landlord files after a notice period ends unpaid, with the landlord entity as plaintiff and a package of lease, resident-portion ledger, notice with proof of service and required certifications (Delinquency, Collections & Eviction).
Fair Market Rent: HUD's published rent by unit size, effective each October 1, from which a housing authority sets its payment standard (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
Family self-sufficiency escrow: an escrow account in a housing authority's case management program that grows as a family's earned income rises (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
FBO account (for benefit of): a sponsor bank account the bank controls, with the platform's ledger allocating its balance to owners; the common payfac structure for rent in transit (Collecting Rent).
Fee waiver: a reversing charge with a reason and an approver that cancels a late fee, reported per property because waiver patterns are a fair housing question as much as a revenue one (Charges & Resident Ledgers).
Flexible rent: credit, not a payment plan: a third party pays the property the full rent on time and the resident repays the provider in installments, so the lease is current and a missed installment isn't rent delinquency (Collecting Rent).
Force-placed (gap) coverage: a master policy that automatically enrolls units without a compliant resident policy and charges the resident where the lease and law allow, often legal liability only (Insurance, Deposits & Guarantees).
Gross rent change: a HUD-approved adjustment to assisted contract rents that reprices the whole property at once and flows into every household's certification (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
HAP contract (housing assistance payments): the contract under which HUD (project-based) or a housing authority (vouchers) pays the owner the part of the rent the household doesn't (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
HAP voucher: an owner's monthly request for project-based subsidy, listing assistance by unit from current certifications plus adjustments and special claims (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
Hold (delinquency): a pause on a case (bankruptcy, SCRA, pending rental assistance, a dispute or court order) that every collection path must honor at once (Delinquency, Collections & Eviction).
HOTMA (Housing Opportunity Through Modernization Act of 2016): the law whose implementing rule changed how income and assets are counted (asset limits, imputed asset income, interim reexaminations, deductions, over-income families), with compliance dates staged by program (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
Housing Choice Voucher: tenant-based assistance where the household pays its share and the local housing authority pays the landlord the rest under a HAP contract for that unit (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
HUD 30-day notice rule: HUD's December 2024 rule requiring public housing agencies and project-based rental assistance owners to give 30 days' written notice before filing a nonpayment eviction, whose revocation HUD later delayed indefinitely (Delinquency, Collections & Eviction).
HUD-50058: the form a housing authority records certifications on, transmitted to HUD's Inventory Management System / PIC and Housing Information Portal (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
HUD-50059: the form owners of project-based Section 8 and related HUD multifamily properties record household certifications on (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
iMAX: the TRACS module through which owners, management agents, housing authorities and contract administrators submit data to HUD (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
Income limits: HUD's annual limits by area and household size (and the tax credit's multifamily tax subsidy project limits) that certifications test against; every prior year is kept (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
In-house collection: a landlord or manager collecting in its own name, which is creditor collection; using a name suggesting a third party makes it a debt collector under the FDCPA (Delinquency, Collections & Eviction).
Institutional guarantee (guarantor waiver): a company replacing a personal guarantor, usually as an insurance product the applicant pays for, covering some multiple of monthly rent; a record on the lease, not a lease member, with claims following delinquency (Insurance, Deposits & Guarantees).
Interested party (additional interest): the property's listing on a resident's renters policy, so the carrier notifies it of cancellation or nonrenewal; the notice stream verification runs on (Insurance, Deposits & Guarantees).
Interim certification (interim reexamination): a certification between annuals when income or household composition changes past the program's thresholds; HOTMA requires one when adjusted income rises by ten percent or more, with exceptions (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
Lapse (insurance): a gap in a resident's required coverage, which starts a clock: a cure period, then landlord-placed coverage with its charge or a violation notice, as the lease and jurisdiction say (Insurance, Deposits & Guarantees).
Late fee: a charge posted by a rule when a lease's rent is still unpaid on a given day, with both the day and the formula regulated by state (Charges & Resident Ledgers).
Late fee cap: a jurisdiction's limit on a late fee's amount, its base (monthly, past-due or period rent) and the first day it may post, kept as effective-dated data; the engine evaluates the law and the operator's policy and posts the lesser (Charges & Resident Ledgers).
Ledger party: who owes a charge on one lease's ledger: the resident, a subsidy agency or another third party; late fees, aging and notices run only on the resident's share (Charges & Resident Ledgers).
Licensed transmitter (rent): a platform that holds rent in its own custodial accounts, recorded as restricted cash owed to clients, under state money transmitter licenses with bonds, permissible-investment rules and exams (Collecting Rent).
LIHTC (Low-Income Housing Tax Credit): the program where households pay a restricted rent and the owner's benefit is the tax credit rather than a subsidy payment, overseen by state allocating agencies and the IRS (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
Local Law 97: New York City's law setting greenhouse gas emission limits for large buildings, with annual emissions reports certified by a registered design professional (Utilities & Energy).
Lockbox: mailed checks scanned at a bank or vendor facility and matched to a lease by remittance coupon, payer name or unit, with unmatched items waiting in suspense (Collecting Rent).
Managed Wi-Fi: building-wide network gear owned or leased by the property and run by a managed provider, so residents are online on move-in day and devices like smart locks share the network (Resident Financial Products & Ancillary Revenue).
Mandatory fee: a charge every resident must pay (pest control, valet trash, a technology package, utility administration), which is part of the price and belongs in the advertised total (Charges & Resident Ledgers).
Master policy (rental): a policy the owner or its agency program buys that covers units rather than residents, in gap (force-placed), blanket or owner-only form (Insurance, Deposits & Guarantees).
MINC: the transmission format owners use to report to USDA Rural Development (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
NSPIRE (National Standards for the Physical Inspection of Real Estate): HUD's inspection standard for assisted and public housing, with compliance dates that have moved program by program; each deficiency becomes a work order with proof of repair (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
Office check scanning: remote deposit capture at the leasing office, depositing to the property's own bank account (Collecting Rent).
Opt-in, opt-out enrollment: waiting for a resident to choose a product, versus enrolling them and charging until they stop it; my rule is opt-in, per person, with the price shown before consent (Resident Financial Products & Ancillary Revenue).
Over-income family: under HOTMA, a public housing family whose income exceeds 2.4 times the very low-income limit, subject to rent policies and annual reporting by the authority (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
Partial payment: a payment of less than the balance; accepted by default outside a legal process unless the lease's payment acceptance says otherwise, and applied by the application rule (Collecting Rent).
Payment acceptance: a lease's effective-dated state (all, certified funds only, full balance only, none) with a reason, set by the delinquency workflow and checked by every channel (Collecting Rent).
Payment application order (application rule): the versioned, ordered list of steps that decides which open charges a payment pays, resolved from the jurisdiction's mandatory order and the operator's policy and recorded on every application; my default is rent first, oldest first (Charges & Resident Ledgers).
Payment blocking: refusing payments on a lease, not just a payment method, because accepting money can change the landlord's legal position; it must never refuse a payment the law requires accepting (Collecting Rent).
Payment plan: a signed agreement scheduling installments against a balance, stating whether ongoing rent must be paid, what a missed installment does and what it pauses; it changes the lease's payment acceptance (Delinquency, Collections & Eviction).
Payment standard: the amount a housing authority sets, without HUD approval, from 90% to 110% of HUD's Fair Market Rent for the unit size (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
Pay-or-quit notice: the notice demanding rent or possession that starts a nonpayment case, with period, counting, content and service set by state; generated from the ledger, demanding only what the jurisdiction allows (Delinquency, Collections & Eviction).
Personal guarantor: a person, often a parent, who promises to pay if the resident doesn't; a lease member with role guarantor who is financially responsible but not an occupant (Insurance, Deposits & Guarantees).
Points ledger: an append-only, per-person record of reward points earned, redeemed, expired and reversed, each with its cause and funder; a redemption against rent is a third-party payment (Resident Financial Products & Ancillary Revenue).
Policy verification: the queue that checks program policies, uploaded proofs and carrier notices against the property's requirement, with compliance computed daily per lease rather than stored as a flag (Insurance, Deposits & Guarantees).
Positive-only, full-file reporting: rent reporting that sends only on-time payments, versus reporting that also sends late and missed ones; California's statute defines positive rental payment information as complete, timely payments only (Resident Financial Products & Ancillary Revenue).
Post on confirmation: posting a payment when the channel confirms it (a cash network's confirmation, an ACH debit's submission) rather than at settlement, reversing it if it returns (Collecting Rent).
Posting run: the idempotent job, recorded as a row per property and business date, that turns recurring charge schedules into posted charges; late fee runs share it (Charges & Resident Ledgers).
Prepaid rent (unapplied credit): money paid beyond what's due, held on the lease as unapplied credit and in the GL as a liability until the application rule applies it to the next charges (Charges & Resident Ledgers).
Project-based Section 8: HUD multifamily assistance attached to units, where the household pays a share computed from income and HUD pays the rest of the contract rent under a HAP contract (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
Proration method: how a partial month is priced: actual days in the month, a 30-day month, or actual days in the year; a contract term recorded on every prorated charge (Charges & Resident Ledgers).
Public housing authority: the local agency that runs public housing it owns and administers Housing Choice Vouchers: waitlists, eligibility, landlord contracts, inspections and HAP payments (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
Recurring charge, posted charge: a promise on the lease (a charge schedule) and the fact it produces (a charge on the ledger); schedules change by new effective-dated rows and posted charges by reversal (Charges & Resident Ledgers).
Referral commerce (resident marketplace): partners selling internet, energy, moving and home services to residents through the portal, with the platform and sometimes the operator earning a referral fee; a paid recommendation is advertising (Resident Financial Products & Ancillary Revenue).
Regulatory agreement: the agreement binding a subsidized property to a program's rules, saying which units are restricted to which income levels; a property can be under several (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
Reinstatement: restoring a tenancy by paying the rent, court costs, limited late fees and awarded fees before or shortly after judgment, as Washington allows; a payment block must let it through (Collecting Rent).
Rent channel: how a rent payment arrived (portal, autopay, text to pay, cash network, lockbox, check scan, office or third party); every channel posts through one matching, acceptance and posting path (Collecting Rent).
Rent reasonableness: a housing authority's test of a voucher unit's rent against comparable units before it signs a HAP contract (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
Rent reporting: sending a resident's rent payment history to consumer reporting agencies so it can count in credit scores, designed around positive-only or full-file, opt-in or opt-out, who pays and who furnishes (Resident Financial Products & Ancillary Revenue).
Rental assistance award: a program's payment to the landlord for a household's rent or arrears, recorded with the months it covers and the conditions the landlord accepted, which become holds and acceptance rules (Delinquency, Collections & Eviction).
Renters insurance requirement: a lease term requiring resident liability coverage at a minimum limit, with the property as interested party, in force from move-in through move-out, and a stated consequence for going without (Insurance, Deposits & Guarantees).
Repayment agreement: an installment plan a household signs when it owes money for under-reported income, against a separate receivable that isn't rent (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
Request for tenancy approval: the landlord's request to a housing authority to rent a chosen unit to a voucher holder, followed by rent reasonableness, an inspection and a HAP contract (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
Responsible person (individual billing): a charge that names one lease member, so on individually billed leases (mostly student housing) each person's payment applies to their own charges first (Charges & Resident Ledgers).
Retail choice (energy procurement): in states that allow it, buying electricity or gas from a competitive supplier at a fixed, index or blended price instead of the default utility rate; the platform tracks each account's supplier, contract and expiry (Utilities & Energy).
Revenue share entry: a dollar earned from an ancillary product (a revenue share, referral fee, door fee or commission), tied to its agreement, property and recipient so owner statements and resident disclosures come from the same rows (Resident Financial Products & Ancillary Revenue).
Right to counsel: programs providing free lawyers to tenants facing eviction, as in New York City, so cases take longer and settle more often, with stipulations tracked as payment plans with court consequences (Delinquency, Collections & Eviction).
RUBS (ratio utility billing): allocating a master utility bill, less the common-area share, to units by a formula such as occupants, square feet or unit type (Utilities & Energy).
SCRA eviction protection: the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act's bar on evicting a servicemember or dependents below a rent threshold except by court order, with a stay on request when service affects ability to pay (Delinquency, Collections & Eviction).
Sealing (eviction records): court limits on public access to eviction records, which the platform honors with a sealed flag restricting who sees the case and by never using masked records in screening (Delinquency, Collections & Eviction).
Security deposit: the resident's money held against what they may owe at the end of the tenancy, a liability on the landlord entity's books (not income), regulated on cap, holding, interest, return and evidence (Insurance, Deposits & Guarantees).
Self-help eviction: taking possession by changing locks, removing doors or shutting off utilities instead of through a writ executed by an officer, which the platform must never enable (Delinquency, Collections & Eviction).
Set-aside (minimum set-aside): the share of a tax credit property's units restricted to lower-income households: 20% at or below 50% of area median income, 40% at or below 60%, or the average income test (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
Special claims: claims on a HAP voucher for unpaid rent, damages and vacancy losses where the contract allows (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
Split payments: a portal feature letting each leaseholder pay a share with their own autopay; the obligation usually stays joint and several, so splitting is a convenience, not a change in who owes what (Collecting Rent).
Submetering: billing each unit for its own measured usage: read, validate, price at the utility's rate for the period, and post, under state rules capping charges at the provider's cost plus enumerated fees (Utilities & Energy).
Surety bond (deposit): a deposit alternative bought with a one-time, non-refundable premium, where the surety pays the owner up to the bond amount and the bond's indemnity terms decide whether the resident still owes (Insurance, Deposits & Guarantees).
Tenant rent, assistance payment: the two portions of rent in an assisted unit, owed by the household and by the agency, posted as separate charges on the resident and subsidy ledger parties (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
Text to pay: a stored payment method charged by a text reply, which needs identity, a balance check and a confirmation, under TCPA consent rules (Collecting Rent).
Third-party payer: an agency, employer, charity or relative paying rent; California requires accepting rent from one who signs an acknowledgment that they're not a tenant (Collecting Rent).
TRACS (Tenant Rental Assistance Certification System): HUD's system that receives certifications and voucher requests, runs edit checks and validates income and contract funding; its record layouts by release are the software's contract (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
USDA Rural Development (Section 515): rural rental housing where households pay a share plus rental assistance, reported to USDA's Rural Housing Service through MINC (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
Utility administration fee: a mandatory fee for billing utilities that regulators look for in advertised prices; the Greystar order named it among fees disclosed late (Utilities & Energy).
Utility allowance: a reduction in what a household pays when it pays utilities directly; part of gross rent under the tax credit rules, so changing it changes the maximum rent (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
Utility billing company: a third party that bills and collects utilities for a property, which raises whether it needs a collection agency license where states license collectors broadly (Utilities & Energy).
Utility invoice audit: checking each provider bill's usage against prior periods, its rate against the tariff, and for estimated reads, duplicates, late fees and wrong tax rates before it's paid and allocated (Utilities & Energy).
Utility sales tax recovery: recovering sales tax a property overpaid on utility bills billed at the wrong rate, often by specialist firms on contingency, from the tax lines kept on every bill (Utilities & Energy).
Vacant unit share: the portion of an allocated or metered utility bill belonging to vacant units, which is the owner's operating expense and never spread across occupied units (Utilities & Energy).
Vendor-funded, client-funded points: reward points the platform vendor pays to redeem, versus points the operator buys as its own marketing spend (Resident Financial Products & Ancillary Revenue).
Visa US Rent Payment Program: Visa's program allowing a flat program fee on debit card rent payments for registered merchants coded as real estate agents and managers, card-not-present only (Collecting Rent).
Waitlist (housing authority): an authority's ordered list of applicants with preferences, ordering rules, purges and reopenings, where every position change is kept because order is a fair housing and audit question (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
Waiver by acceptance: the risk that accepting rent after a nonpayment notice or filing waives the landlord's right to proceed; Oregon treats accepting partial rent after a termination notice as a waiver unless a signed agreement says otherwise (Collecting Rent).
Whole-building data: aggregated usage for every unit, needed for benchmarking when residents hold direct accounts and supplied by many utilities on request (Utilities & Energy).
Writ (of possession): the court order, executed by an officer after judgment, that is the only lawful way possession changes hands (Delinquency, Collections & Eviction).
Write-off: moving an unpaid balance to bad debt in the GL while keeping it collectible, with recoveries posted as payments against the written-off charges (Delinquency, Collections & Eviction).

Abatement (HAP): stopping HAP payments to a landlord when a voucher unit fails inspection and isn't repaired in time (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
Aged receivables (aging): the report of open charges by age (current, 30, 60, 90 days), computed from open charges and their due dates rather than stored in a column, which is why payment application order changes it (Charges & Resident Ledgers).
Agent of payee (collection agent): a model where the platform collects rent as the landlord's agent under a written agreement and the resident's obligation ends on the agent's receipt, relying on the agent-of-payee exemption where a state recognizes it (Collecting Rent).
Ancillary agreement: the record of one product line's contract and economics: counterparty, what's sold, who sells and pays, revenue terms, exclusivity and the disclosure text residents see (Resident Financial Products & Ancillary Revenue).
Automatic stay: the halt a bankruptcy petition imposes from the moment it's filed, which must stop the eviction, late fees, autopay retries and placements until counsel decides (Delinquency, Collections & Eviction).
Autopay: recurring ACH debits or stored-card payments whose authorization covers the balance due with notice of varying amounts; it stops on move-out and pauses on a payment block (Collecting Rent).
Average income test: the tax credit set-aside where the designated income limits of at least 40% of units average no more than 60% of area median income (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
Benchmarking (energy): annual reporting of a building's energy use to a city or state, commonly through ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager, tracked as a calendar of obligations per building (Utilities & Energy).
BEPS (building performance standards): laws requiring buildings to meet limits on energy use or emissions, beyond reporting it; New York City's Local Law 97 and Washington's Clean Buildings Performance Standard are examples (Utilities & Energy).
Blanket coverage: a master policy that enrolls every unit, with every resident paying through a scheduled charge or rent, making it a mandatory recurring charge in the advertised total (Insurance, Deposits & Guarantees).
Breakage (points): the accounting for points and gift-card-like concessions never redeemed; unredeemed value is a liability until used or expired, with expiry and unclaimed-property rules varying by state (Resident Financial Products & Ancillary Revenue).
Bulk agreement (bulk internet): an owner's contract with a provider to serve every unit at a discounted bulk rate, recovered through a monthly technology fee to residents, with the margin as ancillary income (Resident Financial Products & Ancillary Revenue).
CARES Act notice: the 30-day notice to vacate required before a nonpayment eviction at properties in covered federal housing programs or with federally backed mortgage loans (Delinquency, Collections & Eviction).
Cash network (rent): retail bill pay where a validation callback checks the lease's payment acceptance before the cashier takes the money (Collecting Rent).
Certification (household): a household's eligibility and rent computed at a point in time, signed and kept: move-in, annual recertification, interim, unit transfer, gross rent change or termination; immutable, with corrections as new certifications (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
Collection arrangement: the per-property, effective-dated record of where rent sits in transit (direct settlement, licensed transmitter, agent of payee or sponsor bank FBO account), the account it settles to, who bears returns and the contract that grants the authority (Collecting Rent).
Collection placement: sending a post-move-out balance to a collection agency with a file (identity, last address, itemized balance, lease, final account statement, disputes), with a return path for payments, disputes, recalls and closures (Delinquency, Collections & Eviction).
Contingent commission: an insurance agency's commission from a carrier that depends partly on claims experience at the properties, a reason to watch who decides whether to file a claim (Insurance, Deposits & Guarantees).
Convenience fee: a fee for paying rent a particular way, regulated by card network rules, general surcharge law and landlord law; a fee the platform charges never touches the resident ledger, and one the landlord charges always does (Collecting Rent).
Counts as rent: a charge code's flag for whether a charge is rent for legal purposes (notices, application order, eviction for nonpayment), separate from its accounting category; it's a default the lease and jurisdiction can override (Charges & Resident Ledgers).
CROA (Credit Repair Organizations Act): the federal law defining a credit repair organization as anyone selling a service to improve a consumer's credit record, history or rating, and forbidding charging for it before it's fully performed; why credit-building fees billed in advance are a question for counsel (Resident Financial Products & Ancillary Revenue).
Delinquency case: one record per lease per delinquency episode, with a stage and holds that every action (notices, filings, late fees, autopay, outreach, placements) checks before it runs (Delinquency, Collections & Eviction).
Deposit alternative: a product that replaces a cash deposit: a surety bond, an insurance policy, a deposit waiver fee, or a payment authorization or letter of credit; each leaves the resident owing for damage to a different degree (Insurance, Deposits & Guarantees).
Deposit alternative claim: the move-out itemization a property submits to a deposit alternative provider, which pays and, depending on the structure, pursues the resident; the resident ledger shows its payment as a third-party payment (Insurance, Deposits & Guarantees).
Deposit cap: a jurisdiction's limit on security demanded; California counts any charge imposed at the start of a tenancy for damage or default as security whatever it's called, so the cap is checked at lease generation across every code that counts (Insurance, Deposits & Guarantees).
Deposit interest: interest a jurisdiction requires on a held deposit, accrued per deposit at the account's rate less any allowed administrative fee, then paid, credited to rent or returned at move-out (Insurance, Deposits & Guarantees).
Deposit waiver: a deposit alternative where the resident pays a monthly fee with no insurance behind it, and the owner waives the deposit and pursues the resident directly for damage (Insurance, Deposits & Guarantees).
Direct account (utilities): a resident holding their own account with the utility, so nothing posts to the resident ledger (Utilities & Energy).
Door fee: a payment from a provider to a building owner for the right to market in the building or access its wiring, under a marketing and access agreement (Resident Financial Products & Ancillary Revenue).
EIV (Enterprise Income Verification): HUD's system that checks reported income for tenants in HUD rental assistance programs (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager: EPA's free benchmarking tool, which compares a building's energy use with its history and similar buildings and scores eligible buildings 1 to 100 (Utilities & Energy).
Enrollment (resident product): a resident's participation in a product, with consent evidence (the offer version and price shown, the channel, the act of consent) rather than a flag (Resident Financial Products & Ancillary Revenue).
Eviction filing: the court case a landlord files after a notice period ends unpaid, with the landlord entity as plaintiff and a package of lease, resident-portion ledger, notice with proof of service and required certifications (Delinquency, Collections & Eviction).
Fair Market Rent: HUD's published rent by unit size, effective each October 1, from which a housing authority sets its payment standard (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
Family self-sufficiency escrow: an escrow account in a housing authority's case management program that grows as a family's earned income rises (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
FBO account (for benefit of): a sponsor bank account the bank controls, with the platform's ledger allocating its balance to owners; the common payfac structure for rent in transit (Collecting Rent).
Fee waiver: a reversing charge with a reason and an approver that cancels a late fee, reported per property because waiver patterns are a fair housing question as much as a revenue one (Charges & Resident Ledgers).
Flexible rent: credit, not a payment plan: a third party pays the property the full rent on time and the resident repays the provider in installments, so the lease is current and a missed installment isn't rent delinquency (Collecting Rent).
Force-placed (gap) coverage: a master policy that automatically enrolls units without a compliant resident policy and charges the resident where the lease and law allow, often legal liability only (Insurance, Deposits & Guarantees).
Gross rent change: a HUD-approved adjustment to assisted contract rents that reprices the whole property at once and flows into every household's certification (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
HAP contract (housing assistance payments): the contract under which HUD (project-based) or a housing authority (vouchers) pays the owner the part of the rent the household doesn't (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
HAP voucher: an owner's monthly request for project-based subsidy, listing assistance by unit from current certifications plus adjustments and special claims (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
Hold (delinquency): a pause on a case (bankruptcy, SCRA, pending rental assistance, a dispute or court order) that every collection path must honor at once (Delinquency, Collections & Eviction).
HOTMA (Housing Opportunity Through Modernization Act of 2016): the law whose implementing rule changed how income and assets are counted (asset limits, imputed asset income, interim reexaminations, deductions, over-income families), with compliance dates staged by program (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
Housing Choice Voucher: tenant-based assistance where the household pays its share and the local housing authority pays the landlord the rest under a HAP contract for that unit (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
HUD 30-day notice rule: HUD's December 2024 rule requiring public housing agencies and project-based rental assistance owners to give 30 days' written notice before filing a nonpayment eviction, whose revocation HUD later delayed indefinitely (Delinquency, Collections & Eviction).
HUD-50058: the form a housing authority records certifications on, transmitted to HUD's Inventory Management System / PIC and Housing Information Portal (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
HUD-50059: the form owners of project-based Section 8 and related HUD multifamily properties record household certifications on (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
iMAX: the TRACS module through which owners, management agents, housing authorities and contract administrators submit data to HUD (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
Income limits: HUD's annual limits by area and household size (and the tax credit's multifamily tax subsidy project limits) that certifications test against; every prior year is kept (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
In-house collection: a landlord or manager collecting in its own name, which is creditor collection; using a name suggesting a third party makes it a debt collector under the FDCPA (Delinquency, Collections & Eviction).
Institutional guarantee (guarantor waiver): a company replacing a personal guarantor, usually as an insurance product the applicant pays for, covering some multiple of monthly rent; a record on the lease, not a lease member, with claims following delinquency (Insurance, Deposits & Guarantees).
Interested party (additional interest): the property's listing on a resident's renters policy, so the carrier notifies it of cancellation or nonrenewal; the notice stream verification runs on (Insurance, Deposits & Guarantees).
Interim certification (interim reexamination): a certification between annuals when income or household composition changes past the program's thresholds; HOTMA requires one when adjusted income rises by ten percent or more, with exceptions (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
Lapse (insurance): a gap in a resident's required coverage, which starts a clock: a cure period, then landlord-placed coverage with its charge or a violation notice, as the lease and jurisdiction say (Insurance, Deposits & Guarantees).
Late fee: a charge posted by a rule when a lease's rent is still unpaid on a given day, with both the day and the formula regulated by state (Charges & Resident Ledgers).
Late fee cap: a jurisdiction's limit on a late fee's amount, its base (monthly, past-due or period rent) and the first day it may post, kept as effective-dated data; the engine evaluates the law and the operator's policy and posts the lesser (Charges & Resident Ledgers).
Ledger party: who owes a charge on one lease's ledger: the resident, a subsidy agency or another third party; late fees, aging and notices run only on the resident's share (Charges & Resident Ledgers).
Licensed transmitter (rent): a platform that holds rent in its own custodial accounts, recorded as restricted cash owed to clients, under state money transmitter licenses with bonds, permissible-investment rules and exams (Collecting Rent).
LIHTC (Low-Income Housing Tax Credit): the program where households pay a restricted rent and the owner's benefit is the tax credit rather than a subsidy payment, overseen by state allocating agencies and the IRS (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
Local Law 97: New York City's law setting greenhouse gas emission limits for large buildings, with annual emissions reports certified by a registered design professional (Utilities & Energy).
Lockbox: mailed checks scanned at a bank or vendor facility and matched to a lease by remittance coupon, payer name or unit, with unmatched items waiting in suspense (Collecting Rent).
Managed Wi-Fi: building-wide network gear owned or leased by the property and run by a managed provider, so residents are online on move-in day and devices like smart locks share the network (Resident Financial Products & Ancillary Revenue).
Mandatory fee: a charge every resident must pay (pest control, valet trash, a technology package, utility administration), which is part of the price and belongs in the advertised total (Charges & Resident Ledgers).
Master policy (rental): a policy the owner or its agency program buys that covers units rather than residents, in gap (force-placed), blanket or owner-only form (Insurance, Deposits & Guarantees).
MINC: the transmission format owners use to report to USDA Rural Development (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
NSPIRE (National Standards for the Physical Inspection of Real Estate): HUD's inspection standard for assisted and public housing, with compliance dates that have moved program by program; each deficiency becomes a work order with proof of repair (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
Office check scanning: remote deposit capture at the leasing office, depositing to the property's own bank account (Collecting Rent).
Opt-in, opt-out enrollment: waiting for a resident to choose a product, versus enrolling them and charging until they stop it; my rule is opt-in, per person, with the price shown before consent (Resident Financial Products & Ancillary Revenue).
Over-income family: under HOTMA, a public housing family whose income exceeds 2.4 times the very low-income limit, subject to rent policies and annual reporting by the authority (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
Partial payment: a payment of less than the balance; accepted by default outside a legal process unless the lease's payment acceptance says otherwise, and applied by the application rule (Collecting Rent).
Payment acceptance: a lease's effective-dated state (all, certified funds only, full balance only, none) with a reason, set by the delinquency workflow and checked by every channel (Collecting Rent).
Payment application order (application rule): the versioned, ordered list of steps that decides which open charges a payment pays, resolved from the jurisdiction's mandatory order and the operator's policy and recorded on every application; my default is rent first, oldest first (Charges & Resident Ledgers).
Payment blocking: refusing payments on a lease, not just a payment method, because accepting money can change the landlord's legal position; it must never refuse a payment the law requires accepting (Collecting Rent).
Payment plan: a signed agreement scheduling installments against a balance, stating whether ongoing rent must be paid, what a missed installment does and what it pauses; it changes the lease's payment acceptance (Delinquency, Collections & Eviction).
Payment standard: the amount a housing authority sets, without HUD approval, from 90% to 110% of HUD's Fair Market Rent for the unit size (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
Pay-or-quit notice: the notice demanding rent or possession that starts a nonpayment case, with period, counting, content and service set by state; generated from the ledger, demanding only what the jurisdiction allows (Delinquency, Collections & Eviction).
Personal guarantor: a person, often a parent, who promises to pay if the resident doesn't; a lease member with role guarantor who is financially responsible but not an occupant (Insurance, Deposits & Guarantees).
Points ledger: an append-only, per-person record of reward points earned, redeemed, expired and reversed, each with its cause and funder; a redemption against rent is a third-party payment (Resident Financial Products & Ancillary Revenue).
Policy verification: the queue that checks program policies, uploaded proofs and carrier notices against the property's requirement, with compliance computed daily per lease rather than stored as a flag (Insurance, Deposits & Guarantees).
Positive-only, full-file reporting: rent reporting that sends only on-time payments, versus reporting that also sends late and missed ones; California's statute defines positive rental payment information as complete, timely payments only (Resident Financial Products & Ancillary Revenue).
Post on confirmation: posting a payment when the channel confirms it (a cash network's confirmation, an ACH debit's submission) rather than at settlement, reversing it if it returns (Collecting Rent).
Posting run: the idempotent job, recorded as a row per property and business date, that turns recurring charge schedules into posted charges; late fee runs share it (Charges & Resident Ledgers).
Prepaid rent (unapplied credit): money paid beyond what's due, held on the lease as unapplied credit and in the GL as a liability until the application rule applies it to the next charges (Charges & Resident Ledgers).
Project-based Section 8: HUD multifamily assistance attached to units, where the household pays a share computed from income and HUD pays the rest of the contract rent under a HAP contract (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
Proration method: how a partial month is priced: actual days in the month, a 30-day month, or actual days in the year; a contract term recorded on every prorated charge (Charges & Resident Ledgers).
Public housing authority: the local agency that runs public housing it owns and administers Housing Choice Vouchers: waitlists, eligibility, landlord contracts, inspections and HAP payments (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
Recurring charge, posted charge: a promise on the lease (a charge schedule) and the fact it produces (a charge on the ledger); schedules change by new effective-dated rows and posted charges by reversal (Charges & Resident Ledgers).
Referral commerce (resident marketplace): partners selling internet, energy, moving and home services to residents through the portal, with the platform and sometimes the operator earning a referral fee; a paid recommendation is advertising (Resident Financial Products & Ancillary Revenue).
Regulatory agreement: the agreement binding a subsidized property to a program's rules, saying which units are restricted to which income levels; a property can be under several (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
Reinstatement: restoring a tenancy by paying the rent, court costs, limited late fees and awarded fees before or shortly after judgment, as Washington allows; a payment block must let it through (Collecting Rent).
Rent channel: how a rent payment arrived (portal, autopay, text to pay, cash network, lockbox, check scan, office or third party); every channel posts through one matching, acceptance and posting path (Collecting Rent).
Rent reasonableness: a housing authority's test of a voucher unit's rent against comparable units before it signs a HAP contract (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
Rent reporting: sending a resident's rent payment history to consumer reporting agencies so it can count in credit scores, designed around positive-only or full-file, opt-in or opt-out, who pays and who furnishes (Resident Financial Products & Ancillary Revenue).
Rental assistance award: a program's payment to the landlord for a household's rent or arrears, recorded with the months it covers and the conditions the landlord accepted, which become holds and acceptance rules (Delinquency, Collections & Eviction).
Renters insurance requirement: a lease term requiring resident liability coverage at a minimum limit, with the property as interested party, in force from move-in through move-out, and a stated consequence for going without (Insurance, Deposits & Guarantees).
Repayment agreement: an installment plan a household signs when it owes money for under-reported income, against a separate receivable that isn't rent (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
Request for tenancy approval: the landlord's request to a housing authority to rent a chosen unit to a voucher holder, followed by rent reasonableness, an inspection and a HAP contract (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
Responsible person (individual billing): a charge that names one lease member, so on individually billed leases (mostly student housing) each person's payment applies to their own charges first (Charges & Resident Ledgers).
Retail choice (energy procurement): in states that allow it, buying electricity or gas from a competitive supplier at a fixed, index or blended price instead of the default utility rate; the platform tracks each account's supplier, contract and expiry (Utilities & Energy).
Revenue share entry: a dollar earned from an ancillary product (a revenue share, referral fee, door fee or commission), tied to its agreement, property and recipient so owner statements and resident disclosures come from the same rows (Resident Financial Products & Ancillary Revenue).
Right to counsel: programs providing free lawyers to tenants facing eviction, as in New York City, so cases take longer and settle more often, with stipulations tracked as payment plans with court consequences (Delinquency, Collections & Eviction).
RUBS (ratio utility billing): allocating a master utility bill, less the common-area share, to units by a formula such as occupants, square feet or unit type (Utilities & Energy).
SCRA eviction protection: the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act's bar on evicting a servicemember or dependents below a rent threshold except by court order, with a stay on request when service affects ability to pay (Delinquency, Collections & Eviction).
Sealing (eviction records): court limits on public access to eviction records, which the platform honors with a sealed flag restricting who sees the case and by never using masked records in screening (Delinquency, Collections & Eviction).
Security deposit: the resident's money held against what they may owe at the end of the tenancy, a liability on the landlord entity's books (not income), regulated on cap, holding, interest, return and evidence (Insurance, Deposits & Guarantees).
Self-help eviction: taking possession by changing locks, removing doors or shutting off utilities instead of through a writ executed by an officer, which the platform must never enable (Delinquency, Collections & Eviction).
Set-aside (minimum set-aside): the share of a tax credit property's units restricted to lower-income households: 20% at or below 50% of area median income, 40% at or below 60%, or the average income test (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
Special claims: claims on a HAP voucher for unpaid rent, damages and vacancy losses where the contract allows (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
Split payments: a portal feature letting each leaseholder pay a share with their own autopay; the obligation usually stays joint and several, so splitting is a convenience, not a change in who owes what (Collecting Rent).
Submetering: billing each unit for its own measured usage: read, validate, price at the utility's rate for the period, and post, under state rules capping charges at the provider's cost plus enumerated fees (Utilities & Energy).
Surety bond (deposit): a deposit alternative bought with a one-time, non-refundable premium, where the surety pays the owner up to the bond amount and the bond's indemnity terms decide whether the resident still owes (Insurance, Deposits & Guarantees).
Tenant rent, assistance payment: the two portions of rent in an assisted unit, owed by the household and by the agency, posted as separate charges on the resident and subsidy ledger parties (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
Text to pay: a stored payment method charged by a text reply, which needs identity, a balance check and a confirmation, under TCPA consent rules (Collecting Rent).
Third-party payer: an agency, employer, charity or relative paying rent; California requires accepting rent from one who signs an acknowledgment that they're not a tenant (Collecting Rent).
TRACS (Tenant Rental Assistance Certification System): HUD's system that receives certifications and voucher requests, runs edit checks and validates income and contract funding; its record layouts by release are the software's contract (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
USDA Rural Development (Section 515): rural rental housing where households pay a share plus rental assistance, reported to USDA's Rural Housing Service through MINC (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
Utility administration fee: a mandatory fee for billing utilities that regulators look for in advertised prices; the Greystar order named it among fees disclosed late (Utilities & Energy).
Utility allowance: a reduction in what a household pays when it pays utilities directly; part of gross rent under the tax credit rules, so changing it changes the maximum rent (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
Utility billing company: a third party that bills and collects utilities for a property, which raises whether it needs a collection agency license where states license collectors broadly (Utilities & Energy).
Utility invoice audit: checking each provider bill's usage against prior periods, its rate against the tariff, and for estimated reads, duplicates, late fees and wrong tax rates before it's paid and allocated (Utilities & Energy).
Utility sales tax recovery: recovering sales tax a property overpaid on utility bills billed at the wrong rate, often by specialist firms on contingency, from the tax lines kept on every bill (Utilities & Energy).
Vacant unit share: the portion of an allocated or metered utility bill belonging to vacant units, which is the owner's operating expense and never spread across occupied units (Utilities & Energy).
Vendor-funded, client-funded points: reward points the platform vendor pays to redeem, versus points the operator buys as its own marketing spend (Resident Financial Products & Ancillary Revenue).
Visa US Rent Payment Program: Visa's program allowing a flat program fee on debit card rent payments for registered merchants coded as real estate agents and managers, card-not-present only (Collecting Rent).
Waitlist (housing authority): an authority's ordered list of applicants with preferences, ordering rules, purges and reopenings, where every position change is kept because order is a fair housing and audit question (Subsidized & Affordable Housing).
Waiver by acceptance: the risk that accepting rent after a nonpayment notice or filing waives the landlord's right to proceed; Oregon treats accepting partial rent after a termination notice as a waiver unless a signed agreement says otherwise (Collecting Rent).
Whole-building data: aggregated usage for every unit, needed for benchmarking when residents hold direct accounts and supplied by many utilities on request (Utilities & Energy).
Writ (of possession): the court order, executed by an officer after judgment, that is the only lawful way possession changes hands (Delinquency, Collections & Eviction).
Write-off: moving an unpaid balance to bad debt in the GL while keeping it collectible, with recoveries posted as payments against the written-off charges (Delinquency, Collections & Eviction).