Do you accept cosigners and/or guarantors?

[Craig S.]

Hello,

I am scaling my rental business and have previously not accepted any co-signers or guarantors simply because I didn't have enough units to fill and so I could afford to be more picky. However, as I have acquired more units and grown, I want to make sure I am not turning away too many people and leaving a unit vacant for too long because my rental standards are too strict.

I would like to see how many of you accept co-signers/guarantors and in what situations? I would not consider a co-signer/guarantor if the primary tenant's income was insufficient or if they had other unfavorable traits that I thought they would be a disaster tenant living in the unit (like a prior eviction, criminal record, etc.) -- co-signers cannot help those things. I currently have a potential tenant who makes good income and everything seems good about her, however her credit score is horrible (about 450) and many derogatory credit accounts. She explained the story of how it happened due to a divorce, etc. however you never know what to believe.

I am curious as to if you allow a co-signer/guarantor, or if you are more strict and simply have no exceptions. If you have 5 units or less, your opinion may not be as relevant to me because it is easy to be picky with few units. I guess I am interested to hear from people who either have experience managing or owning yourself more than 10 units and can understand my question from a scalability perspective. I am considering keeping my policy and not allowing co-signers/guarantors under any circumstances and just keep looking until I find a better tenant to meet my standards on their own. But I also don't want to walk away from potentially good tenants. At the same time, I have read many posts on BP regarding co-signers and there seems to be more bad than good.

Looking forward to hear your thoughts, thanks!