RentSpire Tenancy Approval Pipeline
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One case file · nine steps · live coverage bars

The tenancy approval pipeline

Every HCV lease-up moves through the same nine steps, from the moment a landlord hands a family an RFTA packet to the day the HUD-50058 clears PIC. This page shows each step, who acts, the regulation that governs it, the software or AI-agent lane that handles it, and an honest coverage bar. Bars read from the audit registry at page load; a step with no registered requirements says so rather than showing a number. Badges mean what they say: LIVE is running in production on real data, IN BUILD has working code but is not production, CONCEPT is a designed lane with no code yet.

Before the pipeline: the family journey starts earlier — intake and portability (which authority serves this address?), briefing (what can the voucher pay in this ZIP?), housing search (help the family find a unit) and the moment the RFTA arrives. Those four are live demos on real data. Everything below begins when the RFTA lands on a caseworker's desk.
01

RFTA intake & completeness check

Landlord submits · PHA receives · agent checks

The Request for Tenancy Approval (form HUD-52517) arrives with a proposed lease. Before anything else can happen, someone has to check it is complete: every field, every signature, utility responsibilities, requested rent, unit details. An incomplete packet bounced back a week later is the single most common source of lease-up delay.

Governs: 24 CFR 982.302, 982.305(a) · Form HUD-52517

RFTA Intake AgentCONCEPTField-level completeness scoring, missing-item letters generated same-day, landlord notified before the packet goes stale
02

Owner verification, W-9 & direct deposit

Landlord provides · PHA screens · agent verifies

The PHA must confirm who actually owns the unit, screen the owner against federal debarment lists, collect a W-9 so HAP payments can be reported to the IRS, and set up direct deposit. Done by hand this means chasing paper across weeks; done by software it is an afternoon.

Governs: 24 CFR 982.306 (owner disapproval), SAM.gov exclusion screening, IRS W-9/1099 reporting of HAP

Owner Onboarding AgentCONCEPTDeed-to-signer match from our 1.37M-record assessor/contact spine, SAM.gov check, TIN validation, ACH setup in one flow
03

Unit eligibility & lease review

PHA reviews · agent pre-reads

Is the unit an eligible housing type? Does the proposed lease contain the required terms — and none of the prohibited ones? Is the HUD tenancy addendum (52641-A) attached? Today a caseworker reads every lease line by line. A review agent can pre-read the lease, flag prohibited clauses, and hand the caseworker a marked-up copy in seconds.

Governs: 24 CFR 982.308 (lease & tenancy addendum), 982.352 (eligible housing) · Form HUD-52641-A

Lease Review AgentCONCEPTClause-level lease read against the 982.308 term list — flags, never verdicts; the caseworker decides
04

Rent reasonableness determination

PHA determines · this workspace

The PHA must determine the proposed rent is reasonable against comparable unassisted units — the nine-factor comparison on form HUD-92273-S8. This is the workspace you are on: real comparables, deterministic math, an audit-ready record for every determination. No modeled rents, no assisted units in the pool, ever.

Governs: 24 CFR 982.507 · Form HUD-92273-S8

Rent Reasonableness WorkspaceLIVESign in above — this is the production product
05

HQS / NSPIRE inspection

PHA inspects · landlord corrects · offline-first app

The unit must pass inspection before the HAP contract can be executed. NSPIRE replaces HQS for vouchers, HUD retired its own field app, and PHAs are being pointed at commercial software. Inspection OS is our offline-first field product: standards effective on the inspection date, tamper-evident photos, 24-hour and 30-day correction clocks.

Governs: 24 CFR 982.405, 24 CFR part 5 subpart G (NSPIRE) · PIH 2026-18 (photo/video verification)

Inspection OSIN BUILDOffline PWA + effective-dated standards engine + evidence chain, bridging into the compliance engine
06

HOTMA income & asset verification

Resident documents · PHA verifies · deterministic kernels compute

Income, assets, deductions — computed under HOTMA rules with effective-dated parameters, so a 2025 certification resolves 2025 rules and a 2027 one resolves 2027 rules. Language models never do this math: deterministic kernels compute every figure from dated rule rows, and the agent layer only gathers documents and explains results.

Governs: 24 CFR 5.609 / 5.603 as amended by the HOTMA final rule (88 FR 9600) · compliance deadline 2027-01-01

Certification AgentIN BUILDCompliance-engine kernels are code-complete with ~180K income-limit rows; the tenancy-approval case-file integration is the current workstream
07

Payment standard & affordability calculation

PHA computes · family decides

Given the payment standard for the ZIP, the utility allowance, and the family's HOTMA-computed income: what does the family actually pay, and does the 40% affordability cap block the lease-up? The live payment-standards demo already computes gross rent, subsidy basis, and the family-share flag from published standards.

Governs: 24 CFR 982.503, 982.505, 982.508

Payment Standard StudioLIVE DEMOSAFMR/FMR math on 51,899 published standards
08

HAP contract execution & file assembly

PHA + landlord sign · agent assembles the file

The HAP contract (HUD-52641) must be executed no later than 60 days after the lease term starts — a contract executed later is void, and the PHA may not pay a dime on it (24 CFR 982.305(c)). The tenancy file must hold every artifact an auditor will ask for: RFTA, lease, tenancy addendum, rent reasonableness record, passed inspection, income file, W-9. A file-assembly agent tracks what exists, what is missing, and refuses to mark the case complete until the file is.

Governs: 24 CFR 982.305(c) (60-day rule) · Form HUD-52641

File Assembly AgentCONCEPTDeadline clocks + completeness ledger + execution-order enforcement (inspection passes before HAP signs)
09

Form HUD-50058 assembly & submission

PHA submits · PIC/IMS accepts or rejects · agent retries

Everything above collapses into one record: the HUD-50058, transmitted to PIC/IMS. By HUD’s own count, roughly 1.3 million of ~10 million annual 50058 submissions are rejected — about 1.3 million staff-hours a year spent resolving errors at ~1 hour each (HUD REAC). A rejected 50058 means the household literally is not counted, and PIC blocks every later record for that household until it is fixed. PHAs below a 95% reporting rate face admin-fee sanctions of up to 30% (PIH 2007-29), and every 50058 effective on or after Jan 1, 2027 must be HOTMA-compliant (PIH 2026-15). Our submission layer already writes both the legacy fixed-width format and HIP JSON from a declarative byte-offset table; the agent lane adds pre-submission validation and rejection triage.

Governs: 24 CFR part 908 · Form HUD-50058 · PIC/IMS · PIH 2011-65 (60-day submission deadline)

50058 Submission AgentIN BUILDDual-format writer (legacy ASCII + HIP JSON) exists in the submission layer; pre-validation and rejection-triage lanes are the current workstream

Where the data still has gaps

The pipeline is only as strong as the data under it. This board is the standing per-source-class audit: what we hold, what lives in a sibling system, and what is missing — with the nationwide public-records path to close each gap. It reads from the same registry our internal gap-closure work is tracked in.