And the Winners are…Alexandria F. Malone and Timothy D. Malone.
This is how they left their apartment when they vacated:
They were a young, good-looking and pleasant couple with 4 children, 5 now. I took them as tenants in 2015 not based on the strength of their credit report but based on the strength of the credit report of their co-signer – MISTAKE #1. A year later the co-signer wanted to be released from the Lease and I released him – MISTAKE #2.
One good thing I did in 2016 is I stopped accepting co-signers because I had a very bad experience with another co-signer situation.
Now all adults need to qualify on their own merit because bad credit not only leads to issues with late rent but also with tenants not replying back when I contact them, ignoring my texts, lack of communication plus trashing of apartments. I don’t know the credit of these tenants, I just assume it’s bad, so the following comments are not necessarily about them:
Here is a general thing that I have learned from 45 apts and 24 years – Not all but most people with bad credit have the mentality that the world owes them, not the other way around (and maybe that’s why they have the bad credit to begin with?) – in other words, they trash other people’s property, do not reply to messages, do not pay their bills and/or modify the apartment without permission or notification (like installing cheap glue-on black bath tiles on top the original tiles) because their attitude is that they don’t owe anything to anybody, in other words they are entitled to trash and/or not pay…because the world rotates around them.
That’s why checking credit is the most important thing a landlord can do.
That being said, it’s one thing to trash someone else’s property but why do some people choose to live like pigs, I guess I will never know!