Santa Clarita Property Management

Let’s start by stating the obvious: I am no Jon Mitchell. Jon is one of the greatest writers I have met in a long time. He has a knack for it and writes very relevant and entertaining stuff with little effort. I, on the other hand, take much longer to write a shorter article that is much less readable. However, when Jon asked me to write this one, I had to say yes.

“I lost my house to foreclosure/short sale and I need a place to rent. Am I going to qualify with Classic?” I currently hear this question more than any other. Sometimes in different forms, or from a 3rd person, but this topic is on a lot of minds right now. And for good reason. There are many people in our valley who are faced with the difficult choices that come with a foreclosure or selling a home short. If you were in any group of people in this valley and asked each person “are you or do you know someone who is currently losing their home?” you would likely get a “yes” answer from every single person. I know this because I have done it on more than one occasion. Back to the question at hand. Unfortunately, not everyone who applies to rent a Classic property is approved. In fact, our approval rate is much lower now than it was 3 years ago.

So here is the lowdown on this question. If you meet the minimum requirements, you can rent through us. We do not reject applications because of a foreclosure or short sale on the credit report. Nor do we reject applications because of a bankruptcy. So, let’s discuss some of the minimum requirements:

You must apply with us and allow us to pull your credit from Transunion, check your criminal background, search the eviction databases, etc… Even if you have a recent copy of a credit report, we will still need to pull our own. If your credit score from Transunion is 525 or higher, you may qualify. If it is under 525, the application will be rejected. A “no score” is a zero and is less than 525.

Now, there are many other criteria such as income requirements, tenancy verification requirements, consideration for pets, etc… And the security deposit varies between the equivalent of 1 month’s rent and 2 month’s rent and is based on the credit score. The higher the score, the lower the required deposit. While I am not going to post all of our specific criteria in this post, you may certainly contact us to find out the requirements. I wanted to post the credit score requirement because this is the one where people get hung up the most.

“So, John, how can I keep my credit that high while losing my home? And how can I check my score?” Those are two questions I can answer in this post. Let’s take a look at the first question – keeping your credit up while losing a home. The way to do this is simple, while you are not paying the house payment make sure to pay the rest of the bills. We have yet to see an application where someone paid all the bills except the house and fell below 525. The ones that fall below 525 let the other bills go as well – credit cards, student loans, cars, etc…

One of the traps we see is when people use credit cards to pay the house payment before realizing it’s hopeless. Then, when they decide to stop making house payments, they justify not making the credit card payments as well. I am not here to discuss the morality of the situation, but this type of pattern will result in significant effects in credit rating.

As far as checking your credit score goes, I only recommend one place: www.annualcreditreport.com. It is the only government-approved site. However, the government only requires that consumers be entitled to one free report from one agency per year. And it doesn’t include the credit score, just the content. In order to get the score, you have to pay a little extra. However, because you pulled it yourself through that website, you don’t get charged with an inquiry on your credit report. So, if in doubt, you can always check your score before you come in. Because we charge $25 per applicant, it can save you a little money if your application wouldn’t be approved. Just be wary of signing up for any recurring credit monitoring, even through annualcreditreport.com. They can be tough to cancel.

The bottom line is this, we understand what is going on with the housing market, foreclosures, short pays, and bankruptcies. It doesn’t automatically rule out your application. In fact, a staggering number of our APPROVED applications have one of the above items in the credit report. Check your credit with Transunion and if it’s over 525 and if we have a property you want, apply! We are in the business of helping people find a good home. We LOVE handing people the keys!