Equifax Data Breach

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The Federal Trade Commission has some good tips on protecting yourself against identity theft.

Whether or not your data was part of the Equifax Data Breach these are all good ideas for protecting yourself, such as:

– Putting a “credit freeze” or “fraud alert”, or “extended fraud altert” on your credit.

https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0497-credit-freeze-faqs

https://www.freeze.equifax.com

https://www.experian.com/freeze/center.html

https://www.transunion.com/credit-freeze/place-credit-freeze

https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0275-place-fraud-alert

https://www.alerts.equifax.com/AutoFraud_Online/jsp/fraudAlert.jsp

https://www.experian.com/blogs/ask-experian/category/credit-advice/fraud-and-identity-theft/fraud-alert/

https://www.transunion.com/fraud-victim-resource/place-fraud-alert

https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0279-extended-fraud-alerts-and-credit-freezes

– Monitoring your credit. This can be done through www.annualcreditreport.com or through a paid credit monitoring service. Another idea is to get a Discover credit card, and their monthly bill lets you know your FICO score from one bureau.

For more information and tips see:

https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/blog/2017/09/equifax-data-breach-what-do

 

Free (for the Landlord) Rental Screening

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Are you thinking of buying an investment property? We have loan programs for both experienced landlords and those just starting out. We can help you calculate how much money you can borrow, how expensive the property you can afford, and how much rent and/or appreciation would make this a wise investment.

When deciding whether to take the plunge an important consideration is whether to hire a management company to find tenants, collect the rent, deal with any problems, etc or look after the property yourself. If you are leaning towards managing the property yourself, a handy service is the ApplyConnect Platform, they provide a free online rental application and free (for you) rental screening.

Note, Allwin Capital is in no way affiliated with ApplyConnect, this post is purely for your information. Please use due diligence when choosing any financial service.

Instead of asking potential tenants to give you their Social Security number and other sensitive and a check for the cost of running a rental credit report, you have the option of just sending them an email invitation for them to directly purchase their rental screening, and then the report is sent directly to you.

Continue reading “Free (for the Landlord) Rental Screening”