Rent while our credit is still good?

[davidk74]

Hello all,
My wife and I work at the same company. Its been great for commute costs over the last few years but we just found out the place is closing down. I have a new job lined up but the pay is less. We are 100k under water in our house and have 35k in unsecured debt. We are probably going to BK and go through forclosure. My question is, should we rent a house now before our cerdit gets wrecked? Or enjoy several months mortgage free in our current house?

[BobMango]

I would probably advise you to wait until you are forced out and save your money in the meantime. You may have to put up a bigger deposit or pay first and last instead of just first but you should be able to find a decent place to rent, especially if you are upfront with prospective landlords about your situation.

Some people don't like living with the uncertainty and so for them it's worth the extra money to find a place as soon as possible.

If your home has associated homeowners fees you will be responsible for these between the time you file and when the bank actually forecloses on the home. I waited until a rental home I had was foreclosed before I filed. That way I had no obligation for the property post filing. Since I'm keeping my primary residence I don't really care about being able to buy another house anytime soon and thus didn't care about the difference between the 2 or 3 year waiting periods for new financing.

[davidk74]

Thanks for the fast reply. We just cant wait to get through this so we can sleep at night again

[overspent]

The best way is to check out the market is go on Craiglist and call around a few places. When I started planning to miss my CCard , mortgage payments. I had the same worry, but after looking at houses for rent in my area (Portland metro) there are 700 listings per day. I printed out about 5 listings, called up the two property management compaies and told them I might be looking for and had bad credit with a foreclosure and possible bk, both the management co's were sympathic and said they had numerous renters in the same boat. I've been following the listings for 3 months now and quite a few of them are still available and for rent signs are everywhere. This indicates a renter, buyer market. If you go thru this excercise this should put your mind at ease.

[forgotten]

Having enough cash on hand for the security deposit and 2-3 months advance rent trumps good credit any day when it comes to renting.

[dscurlock]

I have never been turned down on renting a place because of my bad
credit...now if you have rent in default, thats a problem...we have
always paid our rent ontime, and never have had problems finding
a place to rent either...based on my history of renting, they are
not looking at your credit, they are looking at your renting history
to make sure you have not defaulted on rent...I am not saying
that landlords do not look at your personal credit. I am saying
we have never been turned down based off just bad credit.

and we rented our last house (2story) from a private owner...so there
were no credit checks of any kind...she just wanted proof
of current employement, and that was pretty much it...

[ryan]

Years ago (when times were good) I was a landlord. Had a number of rental houses and townhouses. In all those years I never checked credit. I did want proof of consistent payment of their most recent rental house or apt. If I had always demanded excellent credit and high scores, I would have been sitting with empty houses all day long.
....and remember this was in good times.