Renting or Leasing a Home after filing

[bailoutplz]

How difficult has it been to find a place to live in a nice area after filing bk? Has it been easier dealing wth private owners than a large apartment complex?

My lease expires in Feb. 2010 and I am concerned that my family and I may have to live in the 2bd/2ba townhome we are leasing for 10 years. We have yet to file, but are thinking about the short and long term affects of filing before we do.

Will landlors accept larger security deposits to compensate for the bk?

Thanks for your responses.

[backtoschool]

You will be able to find a nice house to rent with a bk on your credit reports but do not even waste your time going with a large complex. They always do credit checks. Individual landlords are way more likely to rent to you, but you will probably have to put down a larger deposit. Of course there are always exceptions, so your mileage may vary.

[bailoutplz]

Thank you.

[PdxDavid]

We are letting our house go in the BK. We have 5 kids so we need a larger place than the one we have now. Even though we could probably stay here another year or so without paying we didn't want to get to the end and have to settle for something that wasn't right for us.

We started looking on CL and found a nice place in a nice area. It is a private owner. We were honest with him. We told him that we were giving up our place and filing. He said that he knows people that are doing the same. He still ran a credit and background check. He only asked for the deposits that he had listed in the ad nothing additional.

One thing that worked better for them is we are not being forced out of our place right now. He is having a place built and you know how builders are. We can be flexible and that works well for him.

I would say just be honest. A private owner is going to be your best bet. Some of the larger management companies list right on their site that they don't accept ppl with BKs.

With this economy there are going to be a lot of others going through the same thing. Owners/Mngmt co. are going to have to loosen up a bit.

Good luck

[killinstinct]

One thing to consider is the fact that apartment vacancy rates are the highest that they've been in years. We did move before our credit started getting trashed (no late's prior to moving), but I'm being told by our atty and I've researched our area and found that even the larger companies are struggling big time. They simply can't afford to pass up any potential tenant.

I would just ask them up front if they do a credit check. If they do, ask if a BK will be an automatic disqualifier. No sense in paying whatever application fee for no reason. My guess is most places won't give you a hard time. This is the new economy. At the most they'll probably just ask for a little more as a deposit.

[needachance]

We are currently preparing to move, prior to filing but have lates and missed payments now...but what happened is we put the word about that we were moving and turns out one of our friends is buying some investment property and they know we would be good rentors and knows our situation and wanted to buy another property, we were just up front about what is going on and things are really working out better than we could have imagined! But stay away from the complexes. That is what we found early on, started talking around and it was automatically a NO at 3 of them so we gave up on that route. But there is a LOT of vacant rental homes around here and we noticed that rents are going down each month. In Colorado Springs it should not be possible but we are getting a 3 bed/4 bath/2 car with almost 2000 square feet in a town home complex for 1000 a month and that is on the upper end of rents for this town right now. So just keep your eyes open, be honest and it will work out. Especially if you have a good payment history on your rent, utilities, phone etc...

[bluemartini]

I am in a complex... I was nervous about applying here because I have a BK7 in my past, but they explained to me that if it was a problem, they would just require a higher deposit.

It ended up not being a problem and I got into a very nice complex actually at a discount rate because my employer is one of their preferred employers.

I've been here nearly 2 years and they have not raised the rent on me so far, knock on wood.

Personally I prefer going with an apt. complex/rental community because I have friends who have been burned by individual landlords who don't do basic property maintenance, or worse.

Just this past week one of my co-workers had to move out of her rental condo on a week's notice. Turns out the condo is in foreclosure and the landlord did not pass along that little tidbit to my friend, who was renting it. She was paying the rent on time all along and then found out she was about to be evicted prior to auction.

If I rented from a private/individual landlord, I would look them up on public records first to check and see if they had any lis pendens on file. Of course this isn't necessarily something you need to do when renting from a friend, as mentioned above.

Good luck. If you have a fat deposit of cash on hand that will surely help, whereever you decide to live.

[killinstinct]

I'm sure it's different in different parts of the country, but our atty assured us we would have NO problem finding a place to live, and so far so good. (I have an extremely stable govt. job/income, though...that probably goes in the plus column.) There would have been no reason for BK other than ugly ugly divorce....

[ame8199]

I filed in August and I am moving out in OCtober because my brother is getting married (this is who im living with). Ive called different apartment and real estate rental properties. They all wanted the bankruptacy discharged. Since Im in a 13 it wont be discharged. But I am living in a rental property right now (the rent is just higher because its a villa). I talked to my current landlord who is a large real estate company. They said they would have no problem with the chapter 13 and since Im renting from them already and we've never been late I can rent from them again without a double deposit. If I was a new renter with them, I would have paid double deposit to rent from them. There are people out there who will rent, you just have to find them.

Good luck!

[jribe]

honestly it's very very difficult to get a rep from any managed complex to be honest in regards to the "disqualifiers" question. They will usually dance around it and not say anything specific but try to be positive. IMHO it's a waste of time.

We had to move to a new area due to my job; and while we hadn't filed for BK yet- it had been over 6 months of no payments on the CC's -so credit was horrible.

We tried at a few places- but didn't want to pay the app fee if the policy was no bad credit and/or no BK.

No one would give a direct answer. Most property management places though did say on their website's no BK.

We found our current place on craigslist- a private owner. It's in a really awesome area and reasonable rent. We did offer them to advance pay 2 months rent - because there was literally two other couples wanting to rent the place the same day. Don't offer an extra "security" deposit- there's some hindrances to that.

But most won't shune advance rent and the normal deposit!

Good luck

One thing to consider is the fact that apartment vacancy rates are the highest that they've been in years. We did move before our credit started getting trashed (no late's prior to moving), but I'm being told by our atty and I've researched our area and found that even the larger companies are struggling big time. They simply can't afford to pass up any potential tenant.

I would just ask them up front if they do a credit check. If they do, ask if a BK will be an automatic disqualifier. No sense in paying whatever application fee for no reason. My guess is most places won't give you a hard time. This is the new economy. At the most they'll probably just ask for a little more as a deposit.

[killinstinct]

I imagine different parts of the country are, well, different. In our area they will rent to just about anyone....there are far too many vacancies. My wife had two judgements, utilities in collections, new job, you name it, and STILL got a place on her own in a nicer larger complex...

[frogger]

There is so much availability in my area that just about everyone will rent to anyone with money. Those "anyone" people with money are hard to find.

[BuckeyeGuy13]

We had no problem renting our home. As part of our Chapter 13 BK, we surrendered our home that was upside down in an incomplete neighborhood that was never going to be finished. We lucked out and found a nicer home in a nicer neighborhood for roughly the same payment as our mortgage. We rent from, of all people, a BK attorney who used to work as a UST... We were upfront, he was understanding, and asked for nothing more than what he wanted from anyone without a BK. In fact, he has been very supportive and given some great advice on how to make our 13 a success...