Parents and other third parties who are not named on the lease may not access the tenant portal.
The tenant account portal is intended solely for those individuals who are named on a lease either as lessees or as co-signers. You, and others named on the lease, are our customers, and your lease and payment information is privileged and private, between those named on the lease, and us. However, third parties CAN setup payment accounts for our tenants.
This is no different than, say your own, your parent’s, or someone else’s credit card accounts. You wouldn’t expect someone to be able to call in and talk to your credit card company about your account, because the account is something between you and the credit card company.
This is true of our accounts as well; however, its even a bit more restrictive because in many cases we have jointly and severally liable accounts. That is, there’s more than one of you on the shared accounts. As a result, our policy is simply to disallow any third-party access to account information.
Parental co-signers are generally allowed portal access; however, this must be a formal co-signer named in the original lease.
Note that this is also true for when third-parties call in to talk about your account. This is your account and your lease, and we cannot disclose information about the account to others via email or over the phone. We make exceptions for the case of confirming that a specific payment initiated by the third-party has been received or to discuss other aspects of third-party payment. That is, if you are a parent and have sent a check, or are trying to set up electronic payment, we are happy to discuss these specific details.
While we know this may be frustrating, especially for those who may have children who are just taking flight on their own–I’ve been on your side of this myself as a father, the bottom line is that the accounts are our customer’s accounts and we all have to respect their rights as adults.