Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Yes, I occasionally get applicants with incomes of $500 who are trying to rent a place with $700 rent. They will claim that they always make it work somehow.
I really feel for them, but I can not afford to adopt them. Often it is people on SS or disability. They have it tough.
But that is one of the reasons why landlordsshould screen thoroughly. Because there are people out there who believe that they can pay $200 a month more in rent than their total income and too many applicants who aren't going to tell you upfront about bankruptcies, evictions, and felonies.
I don't know what it is about some people. They seem to believe that if someone will loan them the money, that is proof that they can afford it.
Lots of tenants firmly believe that landlords don't really do the screening. I guess they are right some of the time, because they seem to be able to find a place to live and they couldn't if every landlord really did run their screening properly..
So is bankruptcy a good thing or a bad thing? Damned if you do and damned if you don't.
As for the ability to pay $200 more than income, that's called street hustle. Good hustlers make it work, posers don't. I live on financial fumes and manage to pay the rent on time. Some don't.
OP: Thanks for the interesting thread! You're right, many people think their credit & background won't really be checked, even when told directly that it will be.
I've had people proactively tell me with a straight face their "credit is really good", and then I pull their report and it's in the low 500's or even high 400's. Not only do lots of people blantly and proactively lie about their finances & credit, they're rarely embarrassed about the lie afterwards. More than a few times I've had someone laugh, shrug and say, "You can't blame me for trying!"
I once had a women proactively tell me her credit was good and "I always pay my bills on time" and then her credit came back at 430! That was the lowest score I've seen in my career. She'd never paid anything on time, had charge offs,multiple unpaid judgments, unpaid collections accounts and a current bankruptcy filing. But I NEVER would have guessed that from her sweet smile and "honest" demeanor.
Landlords and creditors: always, always, always check the bankground info you said you were going to check. If you think, "no one would lie about that if they know I'm going to check" you are WRONG!!
PS: I keep writing "proactively", because I didn't ask them. They just volunteered to tell me all about their "good credit" even though they knew I was going to check.
I once had a 490 credit score with a bunch of charged off debts, but my rent has always been paid on time. What exactly does a credit score tell you and how is it relevant to you if the rent always comes in on time?
I assume these must be very inexperienced renters, who have no idea what the usual qualifications are for renting a place, or they have rented from inexperienced or lazy landlords who never bothered to prequalify them before. Did the ReMax agent make any effort to educate them regarding the requirements, if not it appears he/she needs an education as well. Why waste your time, his/hers and theirs when they are so underqualified?
Could be they have never previously experienced professional screening. I moved to a big city from a smaller city where the prevailing practice was for landlords to rely on the word of (current and previous) landlords and employers. Nobody there cared about my credit, only whether my rental history was good and whether I had sufficient stable income to continue to pay the rent on time. Also, before the relocation, I was in the last place there for over 10 years and thus missed any management practice changes which might have occurred during that time.
And your experiences spanning many years are valid. I was a landlord in a private home for over a decade and, at the same time, was employed by a company who controlled multiple retail units and with whose lease agreements I was very much involved. The criticism to poster Koala is in my opinion both of merit and viable.
I try to avoid doing business with control freaks.
If someone says they have good enough credit, above 600, for example, and you run their report and get a 550 score, they may not have lied. Depending on the bureau and time the credit report is run, scores can vary by a lot.
I've run my score on tansunion and gotten a score around 840. But then run it a couple months later and it is 725. That could be because of things like changes in credit card balances. Also, myfico scores are often 100 points lower than the scores from individual bureaus. I could say I have an 850 score, then landlord pulls a 750 from another bureau and think I lied.
So if you want to know if an applicant is lying, you need to ask specifics, like what is the score number, what bureau and when did you run the report.
I've had a 490 and a 628 at the same time.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
