Life can change rapidly nowadays. Job transfers, new relationships, and exciting opportunities can have anyone looking for new housing — fast! What happens when such changes lead to friends and family asking if they can crash at your place? Do couchsurfers belong on the apartment lease?
You’ve scoured the internet to find the perfect apartment, wowed the socks off your future landlord, and picked the perfect color to accent the cabinets in your new kitchen.
Talk about nerve wracking! Applying for an apartment and reading over the lease or rental agreement can definitely bring beads of sweat to your forehead. Lease agreements are contracts that define tenant-landlord relationships and often use confusing “legalese.” Even the simplest apartment leases can use some pretty uncommon terms and phrases. Do you really know what everything means? It may be good to double check your lease know-how before signing on the dotted line. Here are some quick and easy definitions for common lease terms to help you understand what you’re signing.
Searching for an apartment in today’s market can feel like a full time job. With the national pool of available rental housing at a 20 year low, there’s a lot of renters out there pining over the same properties. As soon as you find a place you like, POOF someone else comes along and snatches it up. When you’ve found your dream apartment, you don’t want to wait! Stay ahead of the competition with these helpful tips that will speed up the application and approval process (fingers-crossed!).
Let’s say a close friend comes to you and asks for help securing a two-bedroom apartment. She is able to pay all the deposits and has no problem adhering to the terms of the lease, but she has bad credit and so the landlord probably won’t accept her as a renter. So she’s asking you to cosign the lease with her. However, you’re worried about what cosigning could do to your credit. What would you do?
Whether you are considering cosigning a lease for a friend or a family member, here are some things you should know about how cosigning might affect your credit score.
What does cosigning mean?
“Cosigning” is exactly what it sounds like: you are signing a lease alongside another person. Because a lease is a contract guaranteeing that the signees will uphold the terms of the lease, both the renter and you will be responsible for adhering to those terms. More specifically, if you are cosigning, you are guaranteeing that the renter will pay all bills due to the apartment. If they can’t, it falls on you to meet the financial terms of the lease.
