Scholastic Capital uses BoomScreen to increase leasing velocity and move families into the best school districts
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This case study is based on an interview with Sean O’Dowd, Managing Partner at Scholastic Capital. All quotes are attributed to him unless stated otherwise.
Before Sean O’Down founded Scholastic Capital, he and his wife began buying homes in neighborhoods with 90%+ owner-occupancy rates and excellent academic appeal. “The idea is simple—we buy homes in really high end school districts, and then we rent them to tenants on long term leases for a premium.” After the first couple of years of putting it to the test, their thesis was validated and Sean began receiving inbound interest from prospective investors. Now, as a private equity fund, Scholastic Capital is on a mission to deliver worthwhile returns for their investors.
“It takes the average person years of their life to work and save enough money to invest in Scholastic. If we lose our investors’ money, we’re losing them years of their life they spent making it. If we rent a home to a tenant who stops paying rent, trashes the place, whatever it might be, that’s us losing their years. And the fact that Boom is, at least from my view, top of the line in tenant screening, it's a no-brainer to work with the software that's going to protect our investors’ years.”
With Boom, renters can build their credit over time as they make consistent, on-time rental payments.
Boom reports rent payments to all three major credit bureaus—Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion.
All renters using Boom can track their reported payments and credit score progress via the Boom app.
Customer support for you, your applicants, and your renters in minutes, not days.
As a CRA, Boom handles all screening report disputes, requests for report copies, and requests for data updates,
English and Spanish support for your renters—and more languages coming soon.
At Boom, our goal is to make housing more flexible, affordable, and rewarding.
Boom was started in late 2020 as one of our co-founders, Rob Whiting, helped two of his family members navigate housing instability due to
COVID-19 - related job loss. During this time, he saw just how archaic and difficult renting remains for the majority of the 110 million renters in the US like his family members. And the rent payment is at the center of this.
Not only has rent increased >4x faster than income for the majority of renters since the early 2000s, but the tools available to renters and landlords alike has similarly stagnated. Rent remains one large lump sum, with no additional benefits on top of paying rent - a fact that can make renting feel like money down the drain. At Boom, we believe that housing can be more flexible, affordable, and rewarding. We’ve started by enabling you to build credit with the rent payments you already make.
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Scholastic Capital was founded by Sean O’Dowd. The private equity fund invests in single family homes in elite school districts and rents them to families on 3+ year leases. Geographic selection is a critical component of finding homes with the highest premium value. Scholastic Capital looks at the ~500 elite school districts in the country alongside key metrics (the percentage of homes that are owner-occupied, rental application activity, etc.) to determine the best homes for investment.
Boom is on a mission to level the playing field for the 110+ million renters in the US by making housing more flexible, affordable, and rewarding. Boom is building a suite of rental financial services for renters and property managers, including rent payment reporting, rent reporting-as-a-service, and a number of integrations for the largest property management systems (PMS). Now serving thousands of renters, Boom is led by second-time founders Rob Whiting (ex-BCG, Rubicon) and Kirill Moizik (ex-Eco, Technion, Grubhub).