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I have no advice for OP, just a comment. It is pretty obvious from this thread (and others like it) that we are in the middle of a serious housing shortage. Back when I first rented an apartment 25 years ago, landlords were lucky to get any applicants, never mind have the leverage to pick and choose among many with impunity.
Supply and demand.
My experience with renting is that it depends on the specific place and its location. Some places can be very picky, other can't.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jrkliny
Limited income, smoking, a ferret, and only interested in renting for 6 months. That should do it. With the current demand for rentals a landlord should have not difficulty finding a more attractive tenant.
I agree. It's amazing the kind of catering some tenant expect their potential landlords to do.
The woman with intuition could have the best intuition in the world but that could get her in trouble with the equal housing enforcers.
I imagine that I am frustrating for the testers as I tell them all the same thing: I look at 3 factors - one is credit, the other income/ability to pay, the third is landlord references. If they are strong on two of these I can let the other slide, though no evictions of course. I don't go by credit score but whether a person has their finances under control and recognizes they are responsible for their debts. Thus a person who doesn't bother to pay a $20/month penny's bill is a lot worse in my eyes than someone who is freaked out by a $2000 medical bill. I've had great renters with lousy credit scores if the problem was due to a divorce or job loss. The fact that they are working on paying down past debt rather than ignoring it is a big plus in my book.
Any whooo... back to the retirees. I strongly advise to have some active credit accounts. Run up expenses on a 0 interest card and pay it over time. If you get a good rate, finance a car rather than paying cash. I'm assuming your house is paid for, if not that will show up as a current credit account.
I get insulted when people wave a lot of cash in front of me. I assume they think I'm broke. I'll look at savings/brokerage accounts if someone isn't working. But I want to see savings that are longstanding. If it's a recent windfall like the sale of a house or an accident settlement I don't know that they aren't gong to blow right through it.
i agree , no realtor would likely touch a deal with such a contingency . they certainly would not be acting in the best interest of their client .
that is really funny because people around here do contingencys all the time we just had like 10 from our church sell their houses no problem with a contingency .
Why do you think that it is going to take a whole year to find a house to buy with cash? If the place is otherwise acceptable to you, ask the landlord for a liquidated damages clause ("lease buy-out") that says that you can break the lease for the equivalent of two months rent (this is standard), and anything else you paid up front is refundable. That way, if you find the place intolerable, or you find a house in three months, you have an out provision. Move in, unpack only what you need in the short-term, and start house-hunting.
Most people who rent can't get out of their lease for "poor maintenance" unless the maintenance issue affects the habitability of the dwelling (i.e., it's so unsafe or unsanitary that a reasonable person would not continue to live there). That usually only happens when a place has been in poor shape for a long time and the landlord refuses to make repairs, or if it is in poor shape when you move in, relying on promises that things will be fixed. Don't rent a place like that, and you won't have a problem. A responsible landlord who can lease his property at market rents is not going to let his property go to seed around your ears. It's an investment that he wants to hold its value. Taking a few days longer than you would like to fix a leaky faucet is not "poor maintenance" that rise to level of moving out.
BTW, the reason that corporate landlords are not showing you any compassion, is because they can't; not because they are mean. (And based upon what you have written, no one is abusing you. Please do not make frivolous accusations of elder abuse.) They understand very well the anti-discrimination laws surrounding housing. The best way for them to avoid any claims of discrimination is to have their rental qualification terms spelled out clearly, and rent the unit to anyone who qualifies with proper documentation. In most instances, that is what federal fair housing law requires. Landlords who pick and choose and make exceptions for the nice old lady with the ferret living on Social Security, and not for the single mother living on welfare who also happens to have enough cash to pay upfront, risk being sued for housing discrimination.
Some individual landlords are either unaware of the fact that, with few exceptions (related to the "size" of the landlord), the law does not give them a lot of leeway in deciding whom to rent to, or they purposely break the law because they don't care, or because they resent being told by the government what they can and cannot do with their own property. Mostly, they get away with it.
You made a lot of sense UNTIL you made a ridiculous comment about someone being on welfare but with enough cash to pay 100% of rent UPFRONT. If such would ever happen, I have no doubt he/she would be reported to the proper authorities for a fraud investigation.
that is really funny because people around here do contingencys all the time we just had like 10 from our church sell their houses no problem with a contingency .
then the buyers likely don't understand that they are going in to contract on a house where the buyer can just say forget it .
would anybody here buy a house where at the last minute the seller could say , i can't find a house i like so the deal is dead ,where you need to sell your house or give up your apartment ?
like i said , if we want a mortgage we may likely be turned down . we would need a bank that does asset based lending . everything generally cost more so we will pay cash if we have to .
Your best bet is a bank that doesn't sell it's mortgages. They call them non-conforming mortgages, meaning they don't conform to Fannie Mae/ Freddie Mac type underwriting standards. These are the standards that are required by firms that buy bundles of mortgages from banks. A bank that holds its mortgages writes its own underwriting standards and can be more flexible as to monthly income requirements vs. assets. Call and speak to the mortgage officer of the bank and ask if they do non-conforming loans and asset based lending. Just keep calling different banks until you find one that holds it's mortgages.
Although it wasn't necessary for us, due to pension income, our mortgage officer (who conveniently happened to be a neighbor on our street) at BB&T told us they hold their mortgages and they don't have to conform to those underwriting standards. We live in a community with thousands of retirees, so they have a lot of experience doing these types of mortgages.
Last edited by TheShadow; 06-02-2018 at 07:35 AM..
we may eventually end up looking in to something else on our plan .
we may decide we want to be snow birds and continue renting up here but eventually buy a place in the villages in florida . we may look into a reverse mortgage to purchase .
we put down about 1/2 and if we choose to , we can never make another mortgage payment again on it. the bank deals with it when we both die and game is over .
it seem to be a nice easy way to afford having the two places . renting here in ny is as much as our monthly nut would be buying in florida without dong it through a reverse mortgage to purchase . .
Great responses here. As a lifelong renter and also a former apartment manger at one point there isn’t a single thing I can say that hasn’t already been said.
I will comment, though, on the OP’s attitude. He said some pretty rude things to prospective landlords. The comments about their being prejudiced against older people as an example or heartless was just not fair.
Renting apartments is a business as any other. There are guidelines based on a legal contract that are pretty standard but do have stipulations that can vary from state to state. As in any business transaction, both parties want to look out for themselves of course but name-calling and special consideration demands are never welcome on either side.
I suggest the OP maintain a more mellow attitude and be less defensive. Much of what he is running into is just standard landlord-tenant relationship and not to be taken personally.
See if you can find a realtor in the area who does rentals. They may know of a privately owned apt or duplex that is available. As to the ferret, make a note on the application to say it is a small animal that lives in a cage... I suspect there are many people who don't even know what a ferret is.
I actually rented from my realtor while we were house hunting. It worked out great. If the OP is serious about buying a house, don't dawdle. They're only going up in price in the area. My house 25 miles south of Tucson is worth $100k more than I paid for it less than four years ago.
In the case of a mortgage I was once told by a lender that regular IRA distribution's were considered income. They just wanted to see a pattern of x amount deposited to your checking every month. They also considered distributions from a taxable account to your checking income as well. Just needed to be consistent. Property management agreed to that as well.
Even a credit card took IRA distributions as income.
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