Nutley, NJ · Member since 2015 · 10 posts · 7 votes
Hi - I have a prospective tenant whose credit is not good but his retired parents are willing to co sign ; their credit is good, own their house and have income which should cover the rent pretty easily
Does it make sense to have the parents co sign the lease primarily in the sons name or just have the lease in the parents name ? If latter, do they need to have a sub lease between them ?
Appreciate any feedback..
That could get complicated (and sticky) pretty quickly. I assume the prospective tenant whose credit is lacking does not have a prior history of evictions, just credit struggles. Personally, I would keep it simple and have them either co-sign or sign a joint tenancy instead of doing a sub lease, at least if you do have to evict the tenant of a tenant if it comes to that. But I would definitely check with your local laws and regs, every state, county and city can be vastly different with what is and is not allowed. Good luck!
Thanks all
Ashley - correct, no history of evictions - they have been living with the parents until now - credit is bad due to debt consolidation but I have yet to see the complete credit report
I am requesting more information from both the parties ; also hoping a better suitor but fingers crossed..
Bon Khator
I managed a property for my father-in-law a few years back and we had a similar situation. It was two friends sharing a 2/2 and the parents of one of them co-signed for both boys. We just added their names to the lease. It worked fine till the boys stopped paying because they had a fight and one moved out. We let the boys break the lease just to move on but we called the parents for the missing rent. Not only did we get the missing rent money the parents made those boys clean the apartment from top to bottom. Heck, they did a better job than our cleaners.. long story short, we won’t do it again but it did work (kind of).
