How do you find an apartment to rent if you have a weak credit score.?
I have recently separated from my wife. I am temporarily living with a friend, and am desperately seeking a place of my own. (My friend insists my stay is only temporary). I found that my credit score is Between 560 – 570. How can someone like myself find an apartment.
Tags: apartment, credit score
Short term: You want to gather up a list of rental references and personal references. If you have a couple of letters of reference to bring to meet the property owner, that’s probably ideal as well. Also, have your credit report handy, and be ready to address any concerns with it. Let the owner know that even if you have been late on bills, you have never been late on the rent, never withheld rent for any reason, and have always had your full deposit returned. These are the most important things an owner likes to hear (hopefully they’re true- in your case). Offer to put down a larger deposit if you can, although some cities and towns have legal limits on how large a deposit can be. Also offer to pay a higher monthly amount of rent than what the owner is asking. Thirdly, you might want to offer to do some additional work for the property owner– gardening, upkeep. As a last resort, offer to have someone co-sign the lease with you, if you have anyone in your life who would do that. This allows the owner to be able to go to another person to get rental income in the event you do not pay the rent. Most property owners don’t like this option because they wouldn’t want to rent to someone where that would be required, but it is a good last resort.
I know this means extra work or time, but if you have a poor credit score, that’s what it amounts to until you can increase your score. Which brings me to my next point:
Long term: get ahold of your credit report. You can get one from each credit bureau for free every year and you can get them at http://www.annualcreditreport.com. Whenever possible, you want to AVOID having a landlord, property company or loan company make an inquiry on your credit. When that happens, your score drops even further, 10-30 points, and it drops for 90 days. Ask property owners if it’s okay if YOU bring them your recent credit report. Most of them will be thankful that you saved them the work, and it saves your score from dropping. When you pull your own report, your score doesn’t drop.
Next, highlight all problem areas. Credit reports usually have inaccurate information, so contest those items. The worst problems are collection items (or god forbid, bankruptcy). You want to clear up those items. After you’ve paid them off (you can usually settle for a lesser amount), you want to contest them at all 3 credit bureaus (or whichever ones have reported them) every 90 days. Eventually the debtor will not respond in their 30 day allotted response time-frame and then it gets deleted out of default. Pay down all credit cards to 40% of the available balance or below. And pay all your bills on time.
You should be able to get an apartment. I got one with a credit score around 544. Property managers usually look for late history payments on rent. If you have a good rental history and did not have to be evicted, you should not have any problems regardless of your score.
Rather than renting directly through an apartment group, I would try to find an owner that is willing to rent out. Most individuals are not able to pull credit bureaus, and most of them don’t care enough to, as long as you give them post dated cheques, and always pay on time