Renting a home is making an agreement - the renter pays rent money and receives a place to live. The renter gets “right of possession” in exchange for the rental payment. All of this get formalized in the Rental Agreement. 

The home is a “fixed asset”which basically means that the home isn’t going anywhere.

But, the rent is not a “fixed asset.” Instead it is a promise to make future payments.

Obviously the property owner wants confidence that the promised future payments will be made. It’s kind of like if you to loan somebody money. You want to know they can pay you back.  

For housing, we also have Fair Housing Laws, which prohibit unequal treatment based upon many protected characteristics. That is a whole detailed legal topic we won’t get into here. But, in everyday life, those Housing laws mean that property management companies need to treat people equally.

So, the property owner wants assurance that those promised future payments will be made, while property management companies need to treat people equally.

That is where rental qualification criteria come in. They are pretty standard at all management companies, and are to give confidence that those “future promised payments” will be made, but they need to be applied to all people equally.  

There is a lot of detail in this topic, but some frequent questions are:

1. Question: Who has to be on the application?

Answer: Anyone who is 18 years or older, or will become 18 during the term of the lease.

2. Question: Where does the application fee go?

Answer: We don’t make any profit from application fees. The entire fee is paid to a third party that provides information to help complete the process.  We strongly encourage people to study the application criteria BEFORE applying, so you can decide for yourself if it is worth paying the application fee.

3. Question: I don’t meet the criteria because XYZ. Can you still rent to me?

Answer: We usually see this question related to credit score. Because of Housing Laws, there isn’t flexibility for “special cases.” If we allow one exception but not another, it could be treating people unequally.  This often confuses people. We understand. Sometimes laws, even good ones, don’t work with the real world.  

An alternative is to find a home being rented by a private owner. They have much more flexibility in choosing renters. Also, some apartment communities may have different rental criteria that are worth looking into.

4. Question: Are you serious that you want income to be 3 times the rent amount?

Answer: Yes, this is based on an old financial rule of thumb to target spending no more than 30% (or so) of your income on rent so you have income left over for other expenses such as food, utilities, transportation, clothing, etc. Google terms like “how much income should you spend on rent” to read more. However, the incomes of all of the renters in the home can be added together to get to this threshold. 

5.  Question: What takes a rental home off of the market?

Answer: Paying the deposit takes the home off of the market. This means that even if one person has started the application process first, but not placed a deposit, another person can secure the home by placing the deposit.  

We hope this information proves useful. We are happy to answer more questions if you reach out directly to us.