Landlivo: from screening our own tenants to a product for Ontario landlords

The challenge

Running our own rental portfolio showed us that manual screening misses forged documents. An edited pay stub, or a PDF created or changed by someone other than the applicant, looks fine at a glance. Other Ontario landlords face the same problem.

What we built

• Application links for each property. Each property gets its own application link, and applicants upload their documents there.
• Document forensics. Each upload is checked for metadata and signs of editing.
• Fraud pipeline. The pipeline cross-checks the documents against each other and against the application. It produces a risk report with a score, a risk tier and the evidence behind them. Documents that belong to someone other than the applicant, or are dated in the future, are set aside automatically so they can't inflate an applicant's income or history.
• Landlord app. Landlords sign in to see their properties, applications and each risk report. Every landlord sees only their own data.

Results

• On one real application, the pipeline set aside 15 of the 18 documents submitted because they belonged to someone other than the applicant or were dated in the future. That kept the risk score from being distorted by documents that shouldn't count.
• Landlords get one scored report per applicant, with the evidence attached, instead of a stack of documents to judge by eye.

Tools used

WebKMS Document Automation plus a custom build: a web app for landlords, a document-forensics service, an automated screening pipeline, and a database with per-landlord access controls. Visit landlivo.com.