Not the OP, but I could use more explanation. Isn't Affirm typically structured as payments over X period of time for something that is normally a one-time purchase?

Why would you do that for rent, which is already spread out over a period of time? Or are they expecting you to pay the annual rent in a lump sum up front otherwise?

Recently my apartment management company added an option to pay your rent in two payments over the month, rather than all at once at the beginning of the month. I didn't look into it, but there's always a catch with these "pay in installments" systems. Nothing in this world is free.

The usual catch is that for now, these companies are offering it at zero extra charge because they're building up sellable corpora of data.

Whether and when this business model will change is any outsider's guess.

It's not at zero extra charge. Most of the Buy-Now-Pay-Later companies charge higher transaction fees to the merchants than say MasterCard [1].

Now, the business of accepting debt from people that uh can't repay that debt is probably going to have to change.

[1]: https://www.merchantmaverick.com/klarna-for-business/

I don't remember the company, but I believe the gist was, you could pay your rent "any time in the month", and/or split your rent into multiple installments each month. They suggested this to everyone over email, and while trying to figure out how to pay rent on time the first month after they took over. There are back-and-forth over if they'd take a regular check, or if they needed a Cashier's Check. They were threatening people with fees and evictions if they didn't get a cashier's check, or use the scammy service. (From the way they pushed it, I'm almost certain they share the proceeds with Greystar)