Helping a friend secure an apartment

[Steve B.]

Hi,

I have a question that apartment owners/managers may be able to help me answer. I'm trying to help a very good friend secure an apartment in Vancouver Washington, as that's where she works, her price range is around $750-$800 a month. Her credit isn’t very good and she makes about 50k a year. My credit is very good and I have a more than enough free cash to pay for any unfortunate contingency. If she stopped paying rent and left for a satanic cult it really wouldn’t affect my finances covering her lease breakage fee or missed rent. Now I have heard different things about being a co-signer, proactively providing a larger deposit, or signing up as a roommate. What is the best way to go about approaching the big apartment mega-complexes with this somewhat unusual situation considering they usually do things by the book.

@Marcia Maynard and others your expertise are appreciated.

[Joe Fairless]

@steve 

@Steve B. if you are a personal guarantor and can qualify for the apartment then she should be able to rent it. I personally wouldn't cosign on a lease agreement for friends but that's another topic. 

[Steve B.]

Hi Joe, your opinion matches what I thought, but I went to see a couple of apartments and they said she needs to qualify as well which I thought was odd.  Also I normally agree about not  cosigning but I'm making an exception for this situation.

[Michele Fischer]

Steve, if you are approaching small landlords you can offer them  a desired solution or get creative, but with the larger managers and complexes, you just need to ask what they require to qualify with poor credit and go from there.  Go to their office and talk to them with your friend, tell them your situation, and ask them if it is a waste of time to apply.  They may give you the standard "everyone is welcome to apply" line, in which case you ask how to reflect your involvement on the application.

We would generally be looking for an additional deposit rather than a co-signer in this situation, which would be your safest thing to provide.  We use co-signers (with a co-sign agreement) when the applicant has no rental history of their own, which may also be the case here.  We have put a co-signer as a roommate only once, and it went poorly, so I would never do that again.  If they aren't moving in, they are a co-signer not a roommate.

Our applicants need to almost qualify on our criteria, then the co-signer or additional deposit cover the gap to get them to approved.  Each landlord can set their own process.

Landlords won't promise to contact you when the tenants first defaults, but you can provide your e-mail address and phone number and ask that you be involved when things start to go bad so that you can work to get a better outcome.  You can also look for places with month to month agreements rather than a lease so you are out up to 2 months and damages rather than potentially more with a broken lease.

Hope this helps.  @Marcia Maynard , tagging you in since Steve tried to.

[Marcia Maynard]

@Steve B. We don't take co-signers. If we have a prospective tenant that has a weakness in rental history, income, credit history, or legal history we may accept them with additional conditions and additional security deposit. You can take a look at our rental criteria and tenant screening questions by going to the BP File Place (Blue Tab Resources, then File Place, then Other Documents.) We have a 2BR/1BA duplex unit that will be available mid to late November at our 8-plex.

It is not uncommon for people renting to have a weak credit history. That should not be too much of a barrier to renting, buying a house yes, but renting not so much. More important to us is the reason behind the weak credit. Rental history is more important to us and well as a strong income source. A weakness in legal history is another matter.

I always recommend using padmapper.com when searching for housing because you can search by neighborhood and it takes its data from the most popular online housing sites. If you want to message me, I would be glad to talk with you and your friend. I know the  neighborhoods well, what is reasonable, what is not, strategies to use, etc. I grew up in Vancouver (since 1967, age 10). Your friend is smart to move to Vancouver since she works here because we are one of those states that has no income tax. :-)

[Steve B.]

@Michele Fischer   That is good advice and similar to what I found, an additional deposit would have been possible.

@Marcia Maynard   Thanks so much for the good advice and possible options.  I agree Vancouver is great and out of the 20 mega apartment complexes I contacted only 4 had any room in November.  So business must be really booming in Vancouver, it has to be a great place to be a landlord right now.

The problem is largely solved as of now because she made the responsible decision and decided with her poor credit and mediocre income she is much better off just renting a room off Craigslist in a private home at a lower cost.  Hopefully she will be more financially responsible in the future and not need help.

Thanks again

Steve