Using student loans to qualify

[Amy A.]

I've recently had some students interested in renting from me.  They will use student loans to pay rent.  My screening criteria requires income of at least 3 times the rent.  How do I qualify these students when they are living off student loans?  Are they guaranteed to receive the loans all year long?  I don't know much about student loans, as I never had any.  They seem like good applicants otherwise.

[Roy N.]

@Amy A.

We rent to a lot of students.   It is not at all uncommon to have student applicants whose only income is their student loan or research grant.  Along with that, students typically have little to no credit history.  

In these situations, we ask the student to furnish a guarantor (typically a parent or grandparent).  We provide a separate credit check consent form for the guarantor to authorize us to pull their credit history.   If the guarantor meets our requirements, then we will accept the student (provided nothing else in their application or background check disqualifies them) conditional on a separate guarantee agreement executed by the guarantor whereby the guarantor agrees to be the financial backstop for the student tenant.