{"id":37484,"date":"2013-02-09T05:30:39","date_gmt":"2013-02-09T12:30:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/renewsblog\/?p=37484"},"modified":"2021-03-16T09:59:29","modified_gmt":"2021-03-16T15:59:29","slug":"2013-02-09-cosigner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/2013-02-09-cosigner","title":{"rendered":"How to Get a Co-Signer to Make Your Lease Worth a Lot More"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>All <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/2012\/12\/09\/how-to-be-a-landlord\/\" title=\"How to Be A Landlord: Top Ten Tips for Success\" target=\"_blank\">landlords<\/a> hate vacancies, but they should never compromise their revenue stream at the chance of renting to tenants with marginal, or not existent, credit history.\u00a0 I would rather have a vacancy than take a shot on a guy like Lloyd Christmas:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Dumb &amp; Dumber -- Empty Suitcase of Money\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/7GSXbgfKFWg?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Often you will get tenants, such as students or young adults, who are renting their first apartment and will have unproven credit.\u00a0 This is not to say they will be non-paying tenants, but extra caution should be taken before renting to them.\u00a0 This is where the co-signer comes into play.<\/p>\n<h2>The Three Most Common Co-Signers<\/h2>\n<p>The co-signer is typically a parent who will vouch for their children.\u00a0 I\u2019ve found that there are three types of co-signers:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Parents who have excellent income, credit history, and are more than willing to co-sign the lease with their children.<\/li>\n<li>Parents who have excellent income, credit history, and are reluctant to co-sign the lease because they don\u2019t want to be on the hook if one of the roommates destroys the place.\u00a0 Often it is the persistent child who forces the parent to cave in and co-sign the lease and you get your tenant.<\/li>\n<li>Parents who have decent income and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/2013\/01\/27\/tenant-screening\/\" title=\"Tenant Screening: The Ultimate Guide (With Infographic)\" target=\"_blank\">credit history<\/a> that is awful.\u00a0 Unfortunately, this has happened to me more than once.\u00a0 In this case, the correct move is to take a pass on the tenant.\u00a0 Two tenants with bad credit history do not equal one good tenant.\u00a0 Move on to the next applicant.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Its amazing that in the 21<sup>st<\/sup> century, I have even rented to a guy who didn\u2019t have a checkbook.\u00a0 To this guy credit cards and car payments were as complex as brain surgery is to the common man.\u00a0 He had an excellent payment record with his previous long time landlord and all his utility bills were paid on time (and in person with cash).\u00a0 Did I rent to him?\u00a0 Absolutely. \u00a0\u00a0Even though he didn\u2019t have a co-signer, his twenty years of outstanding payment history superseded the need for a co-signer.<\/p>\n<p>Does it seem like I\u2019m contracting myself here?\u00a0 I always error on the conservative side when renting to tenants with limited or bad credit.\u00a0 However, don\u2019t reject a tenant because his case is unique.<\/p>\n<p>Leave a comment below.\u00a0 I\u2019ll gladly respond.<\/p>\n<p><font size=\"-2\">Photo:  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/41220666@N08\/4316401177\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><\/a><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>All landlords hate vacancies, but they should never compromise their revenue stream at the chance of renting to tenants with marginal, or not existent, credit history.\u00a0 I would rather have [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":779,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5183],"tags":[3351,966,569],"class_list":["post-37484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-landlording","tag-credit-check","tag-lease","tag-tenant"],"acf":[],"comment_count":0,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/779"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37484\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}