how do guarantors for apartment leases work?

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Does it affect your credit? Is it just liability in case I miss rent? I’m a student living in another state away from my parents so my guarantor for my lease is my dad.

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2 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Apartments typically have rules that renters have to have 3x the rent in income, or something along those lines. As a student, you most likely don’t. So they want somebody who will guarantee the rent will be paid since your income doesn’t meet the typical guidelines.

Anonymous 0 Comments

A guarantor is basically someone vouching for the lease. In most cases, it’s just like they applied themselves.

For a lease, it means they guarantee that they’re responsible if you can’t keep up. If you stick to everything you need, they never have to think about it. If you don’t pay, they’re required to do so and it will reflect on their credit if the payment doesn’t happen.

They’re saying “I guarantee this will be paid, one way or the other”. If you pay everything, all is well, and you could use that as evidence to the next lease that you can do it on your own. As above, if you don’t they’ll be required to take care of it or deal with the consequences.

Basically, if you don’t have any credit (or have poor credit), a place might not want to rent to you. So I step in and say “I have good credit, and I’ll put it on the line to guarantee the lease won’t be abused, and will be honored completely.” Now they feel better, because if something goes wrong they can always call me. I have good credit and a good history, so they’re confident I can take care of it.

Edit: removed part about loans because this is about leases.