My Parent Won't Be My Guarantor. Now What?

Moving to a new place can be a daunting and stressful task. Moving to New York can seem especially difficult once you hear everyone’s tales of woe with their own moving experience.

If you would like to live alone, this post is for you. With that decision made, be prepared to hear the word “guarantor” more times than you can count. A guarantor is someone who co-signs the lease to make sure that you are covered, should you find yourself not able to pay the rent. This also gives the landlord the ability to hold a secondary person responsible should things not work out as you had planned, financially or otherwise.

For most renters, the guarantor invariably ends up being a parent. But what do you do if finding a guarantor is just not an option for you? How can you still rent an apartment if there is no one to back you up?

Fear not – TrueDwell has got you covered. Below are some alternative options, as well as a true story from one of our co-founders.

Option 1:

Enter TheGuarantors.com.

This company will guarantee your lease to the landlord from anywhere from 6-18 months and provides flexibility to help landlords better manage their vacancies. They give you a variety of payment options including debit cards, bank checks or wire transfers making it an easy transaction. One of the other big advantages is that they will only require you to earn 27X the monthly rent instead of typical dreaded 40X, which can make the process of qualifying much more palatable. If you qualify for their service it can save you a ton of money on the front end by not having to pay additional security to the landlord to secure your lease. With their personalized experience they will help guide you through the process of getting approved for your lease from beginning to end to make sure that you get approved in a quick and seamless manner. They also have close relationships with landlords, Universities and banking institutions so that you can sleep well at night knowing that everything is taken care of. Check them out at TheGuarantors.com or view their FAQ here for more information.

Option 2:

Money, lots and lots of money.

The typical security deposit for someone to rent an apartment without a guarantor who does not meet the landlord’s income requirements is 6 months at a minimum, and up to 1 full year’s rent in security. Plus, the owner is going to want to see a healthy bank statement after you forked over all that cash, just to double check. Some of these policies are set in stone; some can be pretty flexible depending on the circumstances. This is where a good agent can save you literally thousands upon thousands of dollars by helping you plead your case, as many agents have personal relationships with landlords that you do not. Should you find yourself exploring this option, one of the things that you can request is a “burn down,” also known as pre-paid rent: a portion of the security deposit can be used for rent payments after a predetermined amount of time. For example, if the landlord is requesting 6 months of security, you could request that they pay the final three months of your lease out of the security deposit. They would still have 3 months worth of money at the end of the lease, and you would be able to recoup some of your upfront cost.

There is one exception to this scenario and that is if an apartment is rent stabilized. By law, owners are not allowed to accept more than 1 month’s security on stabilized apartments. Them’s the breaks, as they say.

Option 3:

What if neither of these previous scenarios are a possibility for you? What if you are bartending (no provable income on a W-2) and have terrible credit from youthful mistakes (that mountain bike seemed like a good idea at the time) and your parents laughed at you when you asked them to be your guarantor? Here is what our co-founder Chris did.

“The above scenario is actually verbatim of the situation that I found myself in. My parents had never even heard of a guarantor, they’re from Arkansas, and I was bartending at a T.G.I.Friday’s in Forrest Hills on Austin St. If you live in Queens, you know the one I’m talking about. I had been living with an octogenarian off of Craigslist, don’t ask, and a friend of mine decided that she did not want to live in Greenpoint, Brooklyn anymore, so we decided to try and find a 2 bedroom together. We did not even bother with Manhattan because we knew that there was absolutely no way we would find anything on our budget of $1,400. (Keep in mind this was 2005.) We ended up taking the advice of a mutual friend to check out Astoria. I had never been there and I had no clue what the neighborhood was like. We decided that we would contact an agent since we were having less than zero luck trying to go at it alone. Even though we knew that it was going to entail a brokerage fee, we felt this was better than aimlessly walking the streets of Queens like Hansel and Gretel asking strangers if they had apartments for rent. We eventually met this agent who was a completely disorganized mess, but even with all of our problems of no provable income, less than stellar credit, and a tiny budget, she felt like she could help us. She ended up finding us an incredible place that we instantly fell in love with. We raced back to her office, filled out the paperwork, and put down a deposit. Then things got a little dicey.

My potential new roommates credit was passable. Mine, on the other hand, was summed up with “there’s someone looking for you.” Still, she agreed to get on the phone with the landlord and plead our case. In the end she was able to convince the landlord to not only take a chance on us, but to do it with just one month’s security. Turns out the unit was rent stabilized. You might think that the agent was acting in her own self interest to get a commission, but I don’t see it that way. It was a crazy experience but in the end, using an agent made the difference in us getting a place. To this day I still live in that apartment.”

So there you go: where there is a will, there is a way. You can always count on TrueDwell to provide it.