Owner Help Center
Great question! It can be confusing. They are both renters at different stages of the renting process.
A prospect is a renter whom we have determined may be a potential tenant fit for one of your rental properties. You can actively reach out to these people with a Premium membership.
An applicant is a renter who has submitted a pre-application to your property listing for your review. Applicants are accessible to all AfforableHousing.com members.
Think of Applicants as active leads, and Prospects as passive ones.
On AffordableHousing.com, Prospects can be browsed in QuikMatch™ if you are a premium member. The QuikMatch algorithm will match these prospective renters to your active listings when they are in any available status or in waiting list mode. Prospects can be filtered by several different characteristics including location, voucher status, bedroom size, recent activity and more. Typically, prospects have not yet applied to your rental properties. Most Prospects will be unaware of your listings and are waiting to be contacted by property owners when they have rental listings that match their housing criteria. Occasionally a Prospect will have submitted an inquiry (sent you a message requesting additional information) on one of your listings. When this is the case, this will be noted in the Prospect’s profile found in QuikMatch.
Applicants will have submitted pre-application details such as household income, current and past housing details, current and previous employment, and possibly other required documents and forms you may have requested in your pre-screening settings. Applicants have expressed a more serious level of interest than Prospects. To get the most out of our applications, learn how to customize your pre-screening application. You will find applicants on your Applicants Listing page as soon as applications come through to your listing.
In summary, a prospect is someone who is waiting to be contacted about a rental opportunity, but has not yet taken the formal step of submitting an application, while an applicant is someone who has taken that step and formally applied to rent one of your properties.
