<p>I just wanted to get some insight from parents but i’m trying to get an apartment for next school year and the lease agreement has a guarantor addendum to it. I’ll be paying the full rent for the apartment but i’m not sure if I still need a guarantor. On the form it says that the guarantor will pay X percent of the rent so if I put 0%, the form is pointless. I was wondering, do apartment companies run credit check on the guarantor even though the occupant will be paying the full amount of rent? thanks!</p>
<p>The point of a guarantor is to have someone to get rent money from in the event you don’t pay on time per the terms of the lease. Sometimes, they are also liable for damage if you damage the rental. The landlord would do a credit check to be sure s/he feels the guarantor COULD pay if you don’t (guarantors are more commonly sought when the person renting has little or no credit history and few or no assets, as well as no job or other source of income). Folks can always look around to see if there are other landlords willing to rent to them who DON’T require a guarantor. For my two kids, I can’t ever remember signing as a guarantor for my S but did have to for our D. It could be that S had a part-time & summer job, more assets & income while D doesn’t.</p>
<p>Thanks for the reply! I’m not sure if I will get accepted because my parent’s credit is pretty bad, but I know for sure my finaid can pay for the apartment. Will apartment leasers consider this?</p>
<p>Hi iambored 10,</p>
<p>My son will be renting an apartment next year with 3 friends and all of them have to have a guarantor. I signed for my son and I am assuming the other parents are signing for their sons. My son will be paying his share of the rent, but basically the guarantor is like a co-signer for a loan. If you don’t pay the rent the guarantor will have to. I think many apartment companies require this because it “guarantees” that the rent will be paid one way or the other! Just make sure the person who signs as the guarantor realizes that they are responsible for the rent if you don’t pay. I don’t believe the apartment company ran a credit check on us or our son.</p>
<p>Of course I can’t speak for LL in question, but I can tell you how I handle it.
If I get potential renter with no credit, little credit, or poor credit, then I require a guarantor. For me, the guarantor income must be stable with good credit. For me, it is a way I can feel confident I can get my money if tenant defaults. If the potential guarantor isn’t satisfactory, then I need someone else as guarantor. Having a promise to pay by a guy with bad credit is not comforting to me.
A student telling me he could pay with his loans means absolutely nothing to me. He might get that money, but he might not pay me. Or, he might move and then not pay me. It would be too naive to think that just because someone has the money they will pay it, or just because they promise to pay they will. Sadly, things don’t always work this way.</p>
<p>In lieu of a guarantor signing onto lease, the lessor might let you pay another month or two of rent up front that would apply as rent for the lease term. He then has a little more cushion if you bail and he doesn’t have guarantor to go after.</p>
<p>Yes, when D rented an apartment with 3 other girls, each girl had to have a guarantor. It does NOT have to be a parent. I have no idea whether any credit checks were run–I don’t believe so, as it would have cost the landlord money for each credit check & when we got a copy of our credit report I don’t believe it showed that the landlord had done a credit check.</p>
<p>In any case, if there IS a credit check and the landlord is dissatisfied with your guarantor, you will probably be allowed to have someone else be your guarantor (if you have a relative, family friend or SOMEONE with decent credit who would be willing to be your guarantor).</p>
<p>Have also heard of some folks putting money worth the tenant’s share of entire lease into a savings account in lieu of a guarantor. Most LLs DO want to rent out the place, so you can talk to him/her to figure out what will be acceptable and workable for both of you. Good luck!</p>
<p>My daughter has me as a guarantor and she has a Chinese roommate. I know they checked me out, but I cannot imagine what they did for the roommate. The lease is written so that if one roommate bails out, the other is responsible for the ful rent. Not the greatest situation for us, but it is working so far.</p>
<p>If I were your D’s LL & had you as a guarantor who was responsible for the entire rent if anyone bailed, I wouldn’t bother checking out any of the other guarantors or tenants. That said, have no personal experience with anyone bailing & not paying their share of the rent in college of grad school–back in the day or with our kids.</p>
<p>They will most definitely run a credit check on the guarantor and probably verify the guarantor’s employment as well. My husband is currently the guarantor on our daughter’s lease, and the landlord had him checked out by a credit checking company before accepting him.</p>
<p>If your parents’ credit is not good, you will need to find a different guarantor or a different apartment where no guarantor is required.</p>
<p>I did make sure that we could foot the whole bill if needed, HImom.</p>
<p>DH is the guarantor on S2’s lease. The landlord ran a credit check on him. S2’s credit history was too short to make him a viable tenant. The landlord said this sort of arrangement was very common.</p>
<p>It probably helped S that he had enough in his savings account to pay the entire rent for the duration of the lease. That may be why he never needed us to guarantee any of his living quarters–as a student or now. D is a different story & we have had to be guarantors for all her apartments & likely may continue to do so until she gets a full-time job.</p>
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<p>This didn’t help my daughter (as a recent graduate renting an apartment in a major city). She had more than enough to pay the year’s rent. She still needed a guarantor.</p>
<p>Oddly, she did not need a guarantor to rent off-campus housing during college. But her brother did, in a different college community.</p>
<p>Yes, this is odd:<br>
“Oddly, she did not need a guarantor to rent off-campus housing during college. But her brother did, in a different college community.” assuming it was the same landlord in both cases.</p>
<p>If it is not the same landlord then it isn’t odd at all. There is no one, single playbook that all landlords draw their policies from. There are laws to be followed, but within that large framework, there are many factors that set our individual policies.</p>
<p>With rentals involving more than one adult renter it is common to hold all parties jointly responsible for the rents. Especially true for young renters. Otherwise, quite common for LL to get partial rent with the excuse that one party has not yet paid. Holding all responsible is a safeguard against this.</p>
<p>Yea, I think there are a ton of factors at play. LLs hate having tenants that keep coming & going every year, which is so common in college towns. Part of the issue is who is actually managing the property, what their experiences have been overall & recently as to how they decide what they want from the tenant before agreeing to the rental. It may also depend on the # of tenants, whether they are in or out-of-state, scarcity/availability of housing at that time, and a host of other factors.</p>
<p>For me, even my income at the time affects my policy. If I have 99 of 100(for example) units rented, then I can hold firm and be very selective about potential renters- within housing laws of course.
If 99 of 100 are empty, then I’ll take most anybody that will sign up!</p>
<p>If you have 99/100 units rented you need to increase rents.</p>
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<p>I have seen two systems at work.</p>
<p>In the first, each tenant has an individual lease, and if one roommate doesn’t pay up, it’s not the other roommates’ problem. However, the landlord reserves the right to kick out individuals who don’t pay and to fill spaces in the apartment (caused either by nonpayment or other factors) with people from a waiting list. In such situations, it is generally required that all tenants be students at the nearby college and that all people sharing an apartment be of the same gender. My son lived in this kind of place while in college.</p>
<p>In the other system, all the tenants sign one lease. The tenants are jointly responsible for the rent and for dealing with the consequences if someone doesn’t pay or someone moves out. In this system, the tenants do not necessarily have to be students and do not all have to be of the same gender. My daughter lived in this kind of place while in college.</p>
<p>I don’t know which system is better.</p>
<p>It is quite easy to see which is better from this LL’s point of view.
In system 1, each tenant would have to make his own payment in order for LL to be certain who paid their share. If 2 people gave money to a 3rd tenant and he wrote one check, it would be difficult for LL to know who had not paid if there was a shortage.
Or, what if there is physical damage? It is easy to predict any original tenant will tell LL that the tenant long gone was the one that did the damage.
Plus, LL would have to follow all same legal procedures to get one deadbeat out as against 3, so that doesn’t help his time or costs. Plus, for the reason below, getting a replacement might occur more often.
Lastly, if all 3 would get kicked out(for example) for 1 not paying, the other 2 have more incentive to see the full amount is paid, or to take it upon themselves to swiftly arrange for a replacement.
Peer pressure, since one’s default affects all 3. LL loses that advantage if 2, 3, 4, 5 roomies are all treated separately.
System 1 would not reduce the LL risk, and in fact, might even increase it.</p>
<p>From the tenant’s pov, I’d want to be responsible for my own actions.</p>
<p>As a side note, I’d add that I learned this the hard way early in my LL career.</p>