Anyways, Your statement above implies that in the UK the SSN equivalent is NOT required, and thus that in the US it is required, to run a credit check.Are you proposing a way to check a person's creditworthiness for renting an apartment, with the US credit bureaus, without SSN?

The other non credit worthy applicant is the girlfriend of the guy with the rich father.  

Here in SF tenants are legally allowed to sublease to anyone per the landlord's written approval(no matter what you say in the lease) and the lack of creditworthiness is not an allowed reason to reject a sub-tenant.

The FICO scoring algorithms do not accurately capture creditworthiness in many cases. 

One of my units has a long term tenant who pays below market rent.The below-market tenant is an ok tenant - They are a bit messy but pay their rent on time and to my knowledge, don't really cause any problems.If I did a cash for keys deal with the existing tenant and renovated the unit, I think market rent for a good, creditworthy tenant would conservatively be $550 /month higher than current rent.Including the attorneys fees, paying the tenant, vacancy during renovation and cost of renovation, the project will cost between $28,000-30,000.I do have the cash on hand, it generates maybe 1% at the moment as I have a fair amount of liquid cash sitting in the bank.It would take about 4.54 years to recoup, basically a 2.2% CAP on the $30,000 investment.

Our lenders much prefer to base their decision on our tax returns and credit worthiness.

If we decide to re-rent, fine....but it will be to a fully-qualified, credit-worthy applicant.Thanks for helping me work through this in my head, all. 

Owner finance it to someone creditworthy and then they become responsible for repairs.  

One of these days we'll see that credit worthiness, at least in the eyes of credit bureaus, isn't that accurate for some people.  

If you are creditworthy, get your own loan and take a 10% discount off the sales price.