Should I apply?
What if I have bad credit?
We are mostly worried about evictions and debts to landlords. If you have credit so poor that it is concerning, you may be able to compensate by paying a higher deposit amount.
We encourage you to download your Credit Karma reports (instructions in the application page) to review your credit history and address history. We are going to look at that and ask questions about any previous addresses you did not list in your application, and debts that are in collections. You can get ahead of it by being prepared, this is an open book test!
I have rental assistance, or SSI, or HUD, etc.
We accept all forms of rental assistance, regardless of who the assistance provider is. We can qualify any legitimate income source such as disability, social security, unemployment compensation, and anything else. Please be prepared to send us your vouchers or some verifiable documentation with or instead of your paystubs, and we will include these alternatives as part of your income.
Note, while we may accept any form of payment, your funding source may disqualify us. It is important that you understand their conditions and match them to our own obligations to confirm they will fund you. We list our financial expectations on our listing page. We will not change these to meet your funding sources qualifications.
HUD Applicants.
- You identify to your caseworker the listing and communicate the terms such as rent, deposit, and utilities included.
- They provide you with a sort of quote or pre-approval. They may call it something else, but it is a less formal version of the final approval voucher that basically confirms they will pay. Sometimes they will want some changes to the language or the numbers and this should be negotiated up front with you and the landlord.
- Most people skip these two steps and go straight to the following, which could result in wasted time and money.
- Your pre-approval letter should provide us with the following information:
- How many bedrooms your voucher will allow for – they are specific about the size of a rental you can have
- How much money will they contribute
- How much money are you allowed to contribute – sometimes they will not let you contribute anything, or they will expect you to contribute something.
- What are their expectations regarding utilities.
- Apply for the lease and get approved. You will give us the information listed above with your applications supporting documents and we will consider this as part of your income.
- Get a signed lease to HUD and they start their processing which includes a home inspection, and a landlord application. This is a time consuming process and can be very tedious. Once the house passes inspection,
- They issue this formal voucher and confirm funding.
- Note that you may have a voucher from HUD saying you are approved to get their assistance, but that is not the same thing as HUD saying they will pay for our rental. Your funding by HUD to us is not approved until the steps in #4 are completed.
- Once this is done and the move in invoice is paid in full, you can get keys
A pet that the listing says is not allowed?
It can’t hurt to ask. In many cases we can make an exception for applicants with a great rental history, so it would help your case if you have some quality references on file. Also, a higher deposit amount may incentivize us. However, please note that if it does not say a certain pet is allowed, you should ask before you apply to confirm if it is allowed or not.
An eviction on record?
We will want to talk to that landlord about the circumstances. You will need to include that landlord in your Previous Landlord Reference section in the application so that we can get both your and their version of the story. It may not disqualify you, but without that reference check, we will have to assume the worst.
My application won’t go through when I hit Submit at the end of the form.
The most common reason that people struggle to get their application to submit is that one of the required fields are empty. Once you hit “submit”, if the application does not go through, please look at the top of the form to see if there is an error message. You might find one that says there is information missing in a required field. Then just go through and look for any of the boxes that are highlighted, probably in red.
You may also find that one of the boxes has a character in it that does not belong. For example, one box may only allow numbers in it, and you might have a dash or a comma in there that you could take out.
Once you have no highlighted boxes or error messages, your application should submit just fine.
How long does it take to know if I am approved?
We have a reputation for fast processing. It is possible for you to send us everything we are going to need in the same sitting as when you actually submit your application. We define exactly what we are looking for in the application page, and we are available for your questions if there is some nuance that needs worked through. We provide a document upload option in the application itself, and have a special uploader in the menu at the top of every web page. With those and emailing, you can do your part as quickly as you want.
For our part, we tend to respond to applications and document submissions very promptly, but rarely longer than one business day. Usually within the same business day, and if you catch us at the right time, it could even be within the hour!
If you gave us everything we asked for with your application, and that came in early enough in a business day, you could possibly know if you are approved by the end of the same day!
What does the application process look like?
- You submit an application for every adult occupant.
- Each applicant submits all of the supporting documents asked for on the rental application page. Some exceptions are made considering circumstances, so we will work through those details by email case by case.
- You are going to get a lot of emails from us with updates and notifications through the process, so please watch your inbox.
- Once we have everything, we will advance your application to the review phase. We cannot begin the review phase until we have all applications for all adult occupants, and all of the supporting documents.
- During the review phase, we may discover some items that create more questions. Once we have answers to all of our questions, if there are any, the review phase is complete.
- Upon review completion, we will make a determination and email you the results. If you are denied, we will explain why. If you are approved, you will move on to the next phase.
- We will draft a move in invoice detailing all of the costs to move in, and we will draft a lease. We will submit both to you for your review.
- Once you have reviewed the lease terms and the financial expectations, you can sign the lease and pay the move in invoice.
- Once the lease is signed and the move in invoice is paid, you will meet with us to get keys. Note, it is possible to pay and sign at the key exchange meeting too. Note, we do not stop processing other applications or showing the property to other prospects until a lease is signed and paid for.
These and other sort of qualifying questions come up a lot, so here is what you should know.
We tend to grade an application on it’s overall health and we compare our applicants in order to select the tenants with the highest qualifications. If there is little competition, it is more likely that we may approve an application that requires policy exceptions or may have a low grade overall score.
The best advice we can give is for you to understand what is expected in the application process and decide for yourself if you want to apply and possibly compete with other applicants. The market demand and your personal motivations will influence your decisions in ways that will be unique to you. We will be happy to answer your questions about the volume of interest in the unit you are considering applying for.
How can your application fees be so low?
We have not raised our application fee one time since 2013. Of course the costs of everything has increased since then, but because of the way we have set up certain parts of the proecss, we can keep your costs low. Our costs are higher than what you pay, We will both have some financial skin in the game here.
Can I send you a different credit report?
We have selected this credit report and this format specifically because it enables us to keep your costs so low. If you want us to make an exception for you, it will increase your costs.
Can I hand off my supporting documents in person, or get help with my application?
We do offer as much support as you need to apply, but this will increase your costs. Our application is designed to be a self service process done remotely, which is one of the ways we are able to keep your costs so low. If you are unable to navigate the process for whatever reason, you can request a meeting with one of our agents who can help you through it. However, we will have to charge for that time.
Service animals, ESA’s, and pet fees?
We make a distinction between a service animal and an Emotional Support Animal (ESA), and we follow federal and local regulations accordingly. Generally speaking though, a service animal is perscribed by a doctor to provide a critical service, and would be exempt from pet fees. To qualify an animal as a service animal, we will need the doctors voucher.
An ESA does not qualify to be exempt from pet fees. Our industry has been a target of scammers who try to pass off their pets as ESA’s similar to a popular scam that targets airlines. While your animal may provide you emotional support, they will not be exempt from pet fees.