A household is one lead

Proposed — pending review

Four people can apply for one apartment together. AppFolio sends us four records and we turn each into its own lead — so Camellia's Pending Applications tile says 4 when there is 1 real application.

Last week's fix spots the words "co-signer" in an applicant's name and skips that row. It can't work: a couple applying together have ordinary names, and the label is hand-typed — ours says "co-signer for Jack Warren" on an application whose primary is Jacob. A new duplicate appeared two hours after that fix deployed. Three bad rows are still in the database. None has been contacted.

Yardi and RealPage both hand us a proper household with typed roles. AppFolio is the outlier we've been designing around.

1. Where should "one household, one lead" live?

Make the household a real recordRECOMMENDED It carries from inquiry to application to approval; people have roles on it. Biggest change, ends the bug class.
Fix the counting only Group by household when we count. Cheap, tile becomes correct, but it's one more place re-deriving what a household is.
Keep hardening the sync Smallest change. We've tried it twice.

2. The three bad rows in production?

Link them to the right householdRECOMMENDED Nothing deleted, so co-signers stay screenable and reachable.
Merge and deleteCleanest tile, loses those people.
Leave themCamellia stays wrong until they age out.

3. The "co-signer" name check?

Demote to a hintRECOMMENDED Fine to show a PM. Never again decides whether a record exists.
Delete itLoses the only role signal AppFolio gives us.