Tenant screening has remained largely unchanged in recent decades. Findigs wants to eliminate the entire category.
The New York-based startup closed a $32 million Series C round on Tuesday, bringing its total funding to $80 million. The round was led by Marc Weiser of RPM Ventures.
The company said it plans to use the funding to expand its AI-driven rental decision platform, deepen its presence in the affordable housing space including LIHTC and Section 8 workflows, and launch a rent guarantee product that extends revenue protection throughout the lease term.
The numbers that make the pitch: Across more than 400,000 units, Findigs says its customers see up to 80% fewer evictions and 90% lower delinquency rates than the industry average. One of our designated customers, McKinley, saw eviction rates drop by 46% in 2025, acquisition costs by 33%, and occupancy rates rise to 98.6%.
“Are my standards actually working?”
This core product provides an automated yes or no (not a score or recommendation) for every rental application, typically within hours, compared to the industry average of days. This decision is made based on criteria set in advance by the operator and applied consistently to all applicants.
That last part is more important than you might think. Steve Carroll, co-founder and CEO of Findigs, said one of the first things his team does with new customers is ask them what criteria they’ve used for years.
steve carroll
“When we ask our customers how they got here, [three times gross income to rent]”Very few people have answers that are rooted in data science or historical regression analysis. The best I’ve ever heard is that it goes back to FDR-era policies regarding housing vouchers for soldiers,” Carroll told Inman.
Carroll argues that that standard means little across a portfolio that spans single-family rentals under $1,000 and well-equipped buildings with doormen and gyms. But the industry mainly accepted it because it was convenient.
“So the first thing we ask new customers is, ‘Have you gotten your standards right?’ We help them get there,” Carroll says. “Ultimately, it is the customer who determines the composition of their occupancy. We support fair housing compliance, but it is the customer who determines the standard. Once it is in place, our system consistently enforces it for all residents.”
Carroll said once a resident is approved, the next question is, “Do my standards actually work?”
Here, Findigs has worked to normalize and understand data related to tenant and lease outcomes. Then go back to the property manager and ask if changes need to be made.
“It’s shocking how little the industry actually looks at and adjusts its standards,” he said.
The second problem is what Findigs calls a philosophical flaw in another central input: credit scores.
The FICO model is designed to predict loan repayments, not rent payments. According to Findigs, it layers in deeper consumer behavior analysis, robust identity verification, guarantor logic, and other proprietary inputs to build what it calls a better underwriting model that relies less on inherited proxies.
“We’re putting our money on the line.”
The most unusual feature of Findigs’ model may be its fraud guarantee.
Carroll said Findigs is the only company in this area that contractually supports its decisions. If a tenant obtains fraudulent identity information and an operator is forced to vacate, Findigs would launch an independent investigation to determine whether there were any omissions in the underwriting.
“This is not a screening,” Carroll said. “It’s a decision. We don’t say, ‘We think you should consider this person.'” We’re putting our stamp of approval on applicants, and we’re putting our money on the line as well. ”
Mr. Weiser framed his company’s investments in a similar light. He called Findigs “the only product that reimagined decision-making itself” and cited the company’s post-lease performance data across more than 400,000 units as a key differentiator.
Weiser said of the tens of millions of rental applications processed each year in the U.S., “almost all of them are still using tools that were built 10 years ago.”
Affordable Housing Compliance Maze
One area that Findigs is clearly pushing forward is affordable housing. Carroll said the platform is already set up to process LIHTC assets, housing choice vouchers, project-based vouchers, and Section 8. This is a segment that most applicant screening tools are not built to handle well.
Compliance challenges are significant. There are approximately 2,500 public housing authorities in the United States, each with its own rules. Taking on a tenant in Chicago under affordable housing regulations is no different than taking on a tenant in Nashville.
“Every American has a right to housing, and we need to make it as accessible as possible,” Carroll said. “We think a platform that can cover both market rates and the most prominent affordable programs is a real plus for the industry.”
Products centered around decision making
Carroll said the company is trying to define a new category it calls “revenue quality,” optimizing occupancy, delinquency and acquisition costs at the same time rather than treating them as separate operational issues.
“The big thing for me is what I’ve observed over the last few years is that Findigs has undergone a transformation,” Carroll said. “I thought of this as a tenant screening product, something that would be consumed by property management customers, but they were still doing the work. Over the past two years, we’ve been building an autonomous product around decision-making.”
He framed it as a paradigm shift. Property management customers turn to Findigs when they want to encapsulate that work back into one system and take it completely off their shoulders.
As part of this round, Findigs is adding Hugh R. Frater to its advisory board. Mr. Frater is a founding partner and managing director of BlackRock and former CEO of Fannie Mae.
“For too long, businesses and prospective tenants have endured manual reviews, inconsistent standards, and delayed responses because there were no alternatives,” Flutter said in a statement. “Modern technology offers an alternative.”
Email Nick Pipitone
