Rental Rant... (in Off-topic)

Wow. Today I was at an absolute loss for words. My significant other and I have been house hunting for the past week or so, wanting to find a nice rental 2 or 3 bedroom in the city as opposed to where we are living now (in the middle of a forest).

So we spend all afternoon with this rental company arguing company policy. It just blows my mind...

My girlfriend is a full-time college student, and works full time, and I'm on state disability for my knee, and a full time poker player. That being said the income between us is about 4,000 a month... Not too much... (I still don't see how ANYONE lives on state disability, it's a joke)

So anyways we are swiftly denied on this $850/month house because we "don't make enough money per month".

I thought it was a joke, seeing as $850 a month is a far cry away from our 4,000 a month budget.


So then after seeing that she isn't joking, she tells me they don't count my disability income as 'attachable income' and are counting only my girlfriend's job that she's working while going to school... Which is significantly less although arguably still enough to cover rent easily...

So I offer a solution. In my mind a fair one. What if I paid the entire lease (1 year) up front. Cash.

...

...

No dice...

No... really no dice. Apparently it would be against company policy...

I just fail to see the logic behind turning away someone because they 'don't make enough' when they are legitimately offering to pay the entire lease up front.

No. I'm not kidding.

I could see if one of us had bad credit, or a criminal record, which isn't the case. "It's company policy that the person or person's renting, must make 5x the monthly rental amount in 'attachable income' in order to qualify as a potential renter".

I'm so frustrated right now, what a joke. /end rant

*sigh*

Wow... you know, it's interesting. I have been in several situations recently where I've tried to get an entity to accept my money, and they wouldn't.

The funniest one was when I made an $8000 purchase on a new credit card, and wanted to pay it off immediately. I offered American Express to send the money within a few minutes direct from my checking account. They refused to accept my money. I've never heard of a credit card company not wanting a big pile of cash.

Your situation, though, is even more ludicrous. If I were the property owner, and I found out about what happened, I'd fire that rental agency.

Depending upon the locality, housing laws can make it very, very hard to evict non-paying tenants. Some property-management firms simply jack up the income requirements in an attempt to cut down on the number of renters who might end up in financial trouble. For better or worse, that's the system.

I just went thru the same scenario not long ago when I had my home trampled by some hurricane named IKE. I needed a place to live while the roof was being repaired and found this great man cave split level townhome for around xxxx a month...Thats only about xxx more than I pay for my home loan. I was told after they charged me 50 bucks for the application that my income needed to be 5x the lease which is xxxx a month. pfffft..Well I realized after all this they didnt lease these townhomes/condos to anyone, they made their money turning people down all day long at 50 bucks a pop...But the reality is, they use this as a convenient way of telling you they dont want you living there and you not being able to prove they are not providing equal opportunity in their housing regardless of race sex religion...They are being discrimanatory legally