Would you rent to me in Clear Lake/Sugarland/League City/Katy? (Houston: short sale)

[cbreeze22]

I've gotten valuable advice from this board, so I thought I'd pose this question in hopes of getting good advice again.

This is me ~

The good: Relocating from GA to TX, have job (employer based in GA), work from home, own car outright, income is more than 3x monthly rent (w/max rent @ $1k), full-time student, 3 months living expenses in savings, can do double or triple deposit, no evictions/smoking/drugs/arrests/pets/loud lifestyle, have mother (GA) with 780+ score that MAY co-sign, but not co-tenant (would rather she be nice enough to help with mortgage, but that's a long, sad story for another day).

The bad: Recent mortgage lates (now short sale), single parent, no in-state references, 2 dependents (8th grade gifted kid and toddler - no daycare expenses), destroyed credit score as a result of mortgage lates (no crazy loan or anything, just combo of controllable and uncontrollable circumstances that have all been rectified. This is just the time when I suffer the negative consequences).

I know it's a lot, and I'm willing to go anywhere from 1 bd + den up to 3 bed, any number of bathrooms, apartment/condo/townhouse/single family, whatever. It just has to be safe, relatively clean, and zoned to a good middle school.

So, if you were a manager/owner/company... would you rent to me? What do I have to do to a) find one, and b) ease their mind?

[texas7]

You might try looking at condos with individual owners. They often rent and might be more understanding of your situation versus a corporate owned apartment, etc.

[barackbff]

Individual owners are the way to go. I'm renting a nice little house in Bellaire, and the application process wasn't stringent. They ran a credit check (fee was only 10 dollars) but put much more weight on references from my two previous landlords. Also, going to see the property gave me the chance to develop a rapport with the owner.

The good thing is that in Houston it's not hard to avoid the big apt complexes (and therefore mgmt companies) and deal with actual human property owners.

Good luck!