In this final episode in our season on fraud prevention, we explore the impact of another huge industry trend, centralization, on fraud prevention, as screening increasingly moves out of the leasing officeIn this episode, Dom Beveridge speaks with Marlee Murdock of Western Wealth Communities, Gardner Rees of Greystar, and Christi Weinstein of BH about how centralization changes accountability, decision-making, and compliance.

The conversation covers:

• Three different centralization journeys: an owner-operator, the industry’s largest operator, and an NMHC Top 10 owner/operator with a mix of owned and third-party properties, approached centralization in different ways.

• Centralization as a compliance discipline: Screening is one of several onsite activities that are moving into small groups of subject-matter experts, improving consistency while reducing training burden and policy drift.

• The benefits of removing conflicted decision-making, separating approval decisions from leasing incentives, limiting overrides driven by occupancy pressure and reducing insider risk.

• Operational readiness and cultural change, and how successful centralization depends on preparing teams for new workflows, redefining roles, and retraining staff to manage systems rather than perform manual underwriting.

• Why fraud is an organizational problem, reframing screening as a portfolio-level risk function, not a site-level task, aligning decisions with long-term asset performance.

• Lessons learned, and the need for continuous improvement: centralized fraud prevention is iterative—adjusting staffing, workflows, and controls as fraud patterns evolve and portfolios change.

Sponsors for this episode:

Western Reporting, resident screening and income verification by Inhabit

EliseAI, AI-driven automation that helps streamline communications and improve operational efficiency.

To get access to the latest 20for20 articles, papers and news about forthcoming events, subscribe to our blog at 20for20.com.

Connect with Dom Beveridge (Principal, 20for20) via LinkedIn, or email to dom@20for20.com.

Our theme, “Beautiful Geometry” by Phish Funk is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License.

Fraud detection has become more automated, but is there a case for more human intuition in the process? In this episode, Dom Beveridge speaks with Damon McCall, founder of ApproveShield, about how human judgment, conversation and case-level review can improve outcomes for both operators and onsite teams.

The conversation covers:

• The human role in screening: Bringing together identity, income and rental history, applying context and judgment to find edge cases that automated checks might miss.

• Centralized casework instead of onsite burden: How dedicated teams handling applications separates sales from screening and removes the onsite conflict of declining applicants.

• Detection of behavioural red flags: Can people spot patterns that algorithms might miss? Implausible income movement, repeated false identity-theft claims, inconsistent narratives—that often evade automated checks.

• Why friction is your friend: Keeping some manual steps by design helps, because a purely low-friction process creates blind spots and raises exposure to fraud

Sponsors for this episode:

Western Reporting, resident screening and income verification by Inhabit

EliseAI, AI-driven automation that helps streamline communications and improve operational efficiency.

To get access to the latest 20for20 articles, papers and news about forthcoming events, subscribe to our blog at 20for20.com.

Connect with Dom Beveridge (Principal, 20for20) via LinkedIn, or email to dom@20for20.com.

Our theme, “Beautiful Geometry” by Phish Funk is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License.

Fraud in multifamily has evolved from individual and opportunistic to a more coordinated and sophisticated enterprise. In this episode, Dom Beveridge speaks with Jess Tierney, chief integration officer at Verifast, James Stilwell, head of fraud forensics at Snappt and Maitri Johnson, senior vice president at TransUnion, about the mechanics of organized fraud, how it spreads, and what operators need to understand about the threat.

The conversation covers:

• Fraud rings, testers, and influencers: How organized groups test properties share techniques, and sell full “rental packages.” Some even create shell management companies to probe fraud systems. Social channels accelerate the spread.

• Inception fraud and synthetic identities: How fraudsters build real credit profiles from fabricated identities, using child, deceased, inmate and CPN-based SSNs.

• Insider risk and incentives: Overrides driven by occupancy pressure or commissions remain a material vulnerability. Centralized workflows reduce the surface area for insider manipulation.

• Signals in the data: Including cross-market patterns, late-night applications, single-document submissions, mismatched device data, repeated use of lightweight payroll tools, or multiple applicants linked to the same fraud ring.

Sponsors for this episode:

Western Reporting, resident screening and income verification by Inhabit

EliseAI, AI-driven automation that helps streamline communications and improve operational efficiency.

To get access to the latest 20for20 articles, papers and news about forthcoming events, subscribe to our blog at 20for20.com.

Connect with Dom Beveridge (Principal, 20for20) via LinkedIn, or email to dom@20for20.com.

Our theme, “Beautiful Geometry” by Phish Funk is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License.

In this episode of Tech Talk with 20for20, Dom Beveridge is joined by Sam Stein (Snappt), Vitaliy Merkulov (Renter, Inc.), and Amanda Cox (President and COO of Bellaire Multifamily Management) to explore why verification of rent (VOR) is returning as a core part of screening—and what modern technology now makes possible.

The conversation covers:

• What is VOR and how does it help? How VOR uses prior-landlord records to reveal late payments, balances, damage, notices, pets, early terminations, and evictions that never reach credit files.

• Why VOR nearly disappeared—and why it’s back: The old landlord-to-landlord phone call broke down as site teams became mobile and harder to reach.AI-driven outreach (calls, texts, emails) and call-center support have restored completion rates to 75–80%.

• The operator’s view: mitigating risk and easing workload: How Bellaire turned around a distressed portfolio, using VOR to uncovere 25 undisclosed evictions, 61 outstanding balances, and hundreds of late pays—none of which were in the standard screening.

• What VoR has to do with fraud detection: 5–10% of VOR results conflict with what core screening reports and 5–7% of reference contacts are provably fake

• The critical difference between ability to pay and willingness to pay, and why it matters for screening

Sponsors for this episode:

Western Reporting, resident screening and income verification by Inhabit

EliseAI, AI-driven automation that helps streamline communications and improve operational efficiency.

To get access to the latest 20for20 articles, papers and news about forthcoming events, subscribe to our blog at 20for20.com.

Connect with Dom Beveridge (Principal, 20for20) via LinkedIn, or email to dom@20for20.com.

Our theme, “Beautiful Geometry” by Phish Funk is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License.

S4 E06: Beyond “Fraud” - Underwriting the Resident Lifecycle

In this episode of Tech Talk with 20for20, Dom Beveridge speaks with Copley Broer, co-founder and managing partner of Sunriver Capital Partners, about why multifamily’s fraud and screening challenges are really questions of risk management. Broer—whose firm invests in and operates PropTech and FinTech companies including Vero and Rhino/Jetty—shares how he sees the sector evolving toward integrated underwriting and smarter, data-driven decision-making.

The conversation covers:

• From “fraud” to “risk”: Fraud prevention is only part of a larger risk spectrum that includes employment loss, delinquency, and insurance exposure. The future of screening looks more like dynamic risk underwriting than static yes/no approvals.

• The Vero acquisition: Sun River’s investment reflects a belief that screening is the “jumping-off point” for everything in leasing—where real data first enters the system and where better underwriting can transform performance.

• Dynamic risk pricing: Borrowing ideas from credit and lending, Broer argues that multifamily will move beyond blunt screening thresholds toward smarter, flexible assessments that keep occupancy high while managing risk responsibly.

• Integrating insurance and screening: Products like deposit alternatives and loss-of-employment coverage reposition risk rather than simply filtering it out—creating stability for operators and affordability for residents.

• Consolidation and opportunity: The leasing-to-onboarding workflow remains fragmented. Sun River’s strategy focuses on connecting screening, risk, and insurance tools into cohesive, product-first ecosystems.

Sponsors for this episode:

Western Reporting, resident screening and income verification by Inhabit

EliseAI, AI-driven automation that helps streamline communications and improve operational efficiency.

To get access to the latest 20for20 articles, papers and news about forthcoming events, subscribe to our blog at 20for20.com.

Connect with Dom Beveridge (Principal, 20for20) via LinkedIn, or email to dom@20for20.com.

Our theme, “Beautiful Geometry” by Phish Funk is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License.

Multifamily operators face a growing tension: how to build strong fraud protection without creating too much friction in the application process. In this episode of Tech Talk with 20for20, Dom Beveridge brings together Christopher Cunningham (RPM Living), Steve Carroll (Findigs) and Mark Fiebig (Payscore) to discuss how operators and suppliers are finding the right balance between screening depth and user experience.

The conversation explores:

• Active vs. passive fraud prevention: Active methods (like bank linking, ID scans, and liveness checks) are now standard, while passive data checks run quietly in the background to flag inconsistencies.

• Friction as a feature: The goal is “easy for good actors, difficult for bad ones.” Controlled friction helps deter fraud without derailing conversions.

• Balancing integrations: Some platforms run as standalone experiences (Findigs), while others embed directly in property management systems (Payscore), giving operators different control and UX trade-offs.

• Resident experience: Prospects are increasingly comfortable with digital screening tools and bank linking—but only if the process feels fast, secure, and seamless.

• The metrics that matter: Operators track not just fraud caught, but also eviction rates, conversion times, and occupancy impact to measure real value.

• Centralization and training: As screening moves into shared-services teams, success depends on keeping workflows simple, results reliable, and associates focused on leasing—not document review.

Sponsors for this episode:

Western Reporting, resident screening and income verification by Inhabit

EliseAI, AI-driven automation that helps streamline communications and improve operational efficiency.

To get access to the latest 20for20 articles, papers and news about forthcoming events, subscribe to our blog at 20for20.com.

Connect with Dom Beveridge (Principal, 20for20) via LinkedIn, or email to dom@20for20.com.

Our theme, “Beautiful Geometry” by Phish Funk is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License.

Document fraud is now one of the fastest-growing sources of bad debt in multifamily—and the tactics are getting more sophisticated. In this episode of Tech Talk with 20for20, Dom Beveridge is joined by Bonnie Smetzer (Asset Living), James Stilwell (Snappt) and Jamie Borodin (Docuverus) to examine how document fraud works, why it has accelerated, and what operators need from modern verification tools.

The panel explores:

• How document fraud has evolved: AI-assisted forgeries now mimic both the visual layout and metadata of pay stubs and bank statements, replacing the crude edits of earlier years.

• The dual lenses of detection: Effective systems combine deep metadata analysis with visual and contextual checks—plus secondary sources such as bank deposits—to identify tampering or fabricated income.

• Market dynamics: Fraud clusters in hotspots like Atlanta, Texas, and Florida before spreading outward, with serial applicants testing defences across regions and property types.

• A new challenge in affordable housing: Applicants are now lowering stated income to qualify for restricted-rent units, adding compliance and revenue risk alongside traditional inflated-income fraud.

• The operational burden on site teams: Writable PDFs and online applications outpace what leasing staff can reliably evaluate, creating fairness risks and driving adoption of automated screening.

Sponsors for this episode:

Western Reporting, resident screening and income verification by Inhabit

EliseAI, AI-driven automation that helps streamline communications and improve operational efficiency.

To get access to the latest 20for20 articles, papers and news about forthcoming events, subscribe to our blog at 20for20.com.

Connect with Dom Beveridge (Principal, 20for20) via LinkedIn, or email to dom@20for20.com.

Our theme, “Beautiful Geometry” by Phish Funk is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License.

Income verification sits at the heart of fraud prevention—and it’s getting harder. In this episode of Tech Talk with 20for20, Dom Beveridge is joined by Sarah-Jane Milliren (Aldon Management), Mark Fiebig (Payscore) and Tim Ray (Verifast), to unpack what income verification really involves, why it’s so technically complex, and how it’s changing with the rise of gig work, open banking, and automation.

The panel explores:

• The five income types: Payroll, government benefits, gig work, side-hustle deposits, and assets—all with different levels of reliability and verification methods.

• Bank linking vs. documents: Direct bank access provides faster, cleaner data, while documents remain necessary for certain edge cases. The best systems use a waterfall approach that blends both.

• Fraud prevention through transparency: Fraudsters often self-select out of processes that require real bank connections—making direct access itself a deterrent.

• User experience and adoption: Renters are increasingly comfortable linking bank or payroll accounts, and companies find the process improves speed, accuracy, and trust.

• Algorithmic judgment: Modern tools don’t just verify deposits—they interpret patterns, distinguish recurring from one-off income, and adjust for market and property-specific policies.

Sponsors for this episode:

Western Reporting, resident screening and income verification by Inhabit

EliseAI, AI-driven automation that helps streamline communications and improve operational efficiency.

To get access to the latest 20for20 articles, papers and news about forthcoming events, subscribe to our blog at 20for20.com.

Connect with Dom Beveridge (Principal, 20for20) via LinkedIn, or email to dom@20for20.com.

Our theme, “Beautiful Geometry” by Phish Funk is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License.