Local firefighter and entrepreneur seeks to revolutionize rental business

Ryan Abell works in a significant helping profession as a firefighter-paramedic with Heartland Fire & Rescue. He further serves the community by volunteering as a board member with the El Cajon Professional Firefighters Foundation, supporting charitable endeavors. 

Ryan Abell works in a significant helping profession as a firefighter-paramedic with Heartland Fire & Rescue. He further serves the community by volunteering as a board member with the El Cajon Professional Firefighters Foundation, supporting charitable endeavors. 

Abell has recently begun applying his inclination for helping toward development of an entrepreneurial venture, with the launch two months ago of Screened Renters. Abell is CEO and founder of the fledgling online company, which allows individuals looking for a new rental home to be linked to those wanting to fill rental units, with each potential tenant’s relevant background reports completed through the website portal.

“Our slogan is ‘Rental Applications Done Smarter,’” Abell said. “Our main goal was to create a streamlined rental process to get to a finalized lease agreement. We believe we are revolutionizing the way of applying to rent.”

How Abell came to develop this likely “revolutionary” new enterprise is simple. While assisting his father as a rental unit property manager, Abell became dismayed over the unwieldiness of finalizing a basic rental agreement.

Why was getting a willing and qualified new tenant into a vacant rental unit so hard? Abell found the process to be “absurd” and “too expensive” for both the landlords and potential tenants in their dealings. A candidate renter had to fill out a paper application and write a $40 check to the property manager to pay for credit and background checks. Renters looking for a new place to live were usually in a tight financial spot, awaiting return of last-residence security deposits and putting together enough cash for move-in expenses. Often, potential tenants seemed reluctant to apply, and landlords had fewer applicants to select from than lower associated application costs would facilitate.

That was a problem, and Abell believed he had a solution for it. Abell’s initial thought was to create a limited personal online rental application process for his father’s business, through which he could screen and pre-qualify possible tenants to rent out empty units more easily. However, he soon realized that he could benefit many others in the rental business sector, merely by opening the website presence to other interested landlords.

How many? Abell said that one in three people in this country are renters. Seeing that need and filling it, led Abell to create Screened Renters. The Internet-based business, according to Abell, can be an excellent resource for “mom and pop” landlords with a single place to rent out as much as for large-scale property management firms with 10,000 units to fill. Abell has made the website free to landlords. A potential renter pays a flat $14 fee through the site and receives in return an Experian credit report, a criminal background check, and a nationwide evictions report, which can be printed or emailed as part of the rental application process.

Abell outlined further benefits of his new enterprise. “The tenants are empowered by doing their own pre-screening. Their Social Security Number stays private.” Possible identity-theft information and other sensitive personal identifiers remain under their control. Tenants can stay organized as their circumstances change, with easy online updates for new information. Landlords are protected too, as any website tenant-applicant user who provides fraudulent information has no reports generated. “The online background checks establish identity,” he continued. “The information about the potential tenant is 100 percent accurate. The process is more efficient, and landlords will see increased numbers of applications.”

A social media campaign and Google advertising rolled out the new company. For a limited time, a promotional offer with code “SCREENME” has made site use free to renters. Through the first two months, 210 landlords and 350 renters accessed the site’s processing.

Website protection measures include encryption at bank-level security. The young company currently has one full-time employee, chief technology officer Steve Devlin.

Standing up this enterprise required overcoming obstacles. Abell said that approaching and pitching credit-reporting agency Experian with a business plan took six months of effort, but has produced a “healthy” working relationship with Experian opening all credit data to Screened Renters. Moreover, Abell assessed that the hurdles from the relevant regulatory agency, the Federal Trade Commission, involved “significant red tape” to establish compliance with restrictions of the Fair Credit Reporting Act. But Screened Renters is now also an authorized credit-reporting agency.

Abell and Devlin already have plans for additional future beneficial features available through the website. Online rent payments are high on the list of coming options, as are separate rental payment portions per roommate for shared units.

“I think this is another way I can help people,” Abell concluded. “This is a better way to rent, and I strongly believe in this product.” Abell’s enterprise can be found online at www.screenedrenters.com.