Full financial disclosure is the key to success in renting an apartment in New York City

Full disclosure when applying for an apartment is the key to success in renting an apartment in New York City.

And your financial documents are the basis to getting accepted by any landlord whether small, large or a management company.

Recently, and back to back, I had two situations where my AptStar clients were not forthcoming regarding the specifics of their documents.

It cost the first person an apartment and the second is still up in the air.

In the first instance I relied on the fact that my AptStar client told me he made $170/k for year end 2018. It wasn’t until he told me he was “having trouble” with his application process that he blurted out “I got paid a portion of that $170/k in early 2019.”

“How much of a portion?” I asked.

“About $70,000,” he replied.

Needless to say, he cannot claim he made $170/k for year end 2018 and instead of renting out his first solo apartment he had to go back to a roommate situation for at least one more year.

The second instance and with the person I am helping now is he failed to tell me he had been in housing court with his current landlord.

Ouch.

This after I helped him put together his financial documents. This after I found the perfect apartment for him. This after some hemming and hawing about a landlord reference letter.

“Why can’t you get a landlord reference letter?” I asked for the hundredth time?

And finally, he told me he had taken his landlord to housing court for over paying on an illegally rented sublet. An apartment he’d rented a couple of years earlier through the previous tenant. A rent-controlled tenant. A person who’d vanished into thin air who never had the landlord’s permission to rent and who could not legally transfer the apartment to another tenant.

“Have you not heard of the tenant black list?” I asked him somewhat stunned that full disclosure was not made until the 11th and a half hour.

“We won the case,” he replied.

“It doesn’t matter if you won or lost there are companies that make this information available to landlords. A person who ends up in housing court with a landlord is immediately considered an undesirable tenant and gets turned down,” I explained.

His application is still pending as I write this and I hope he gets the apartment. However, I learned that people don’t tell all at hello. Not even to someone who is on their side trying to help them.

If you’re hoping to rent an apartment you really must first figure out if there are going to be issues with the approval process. You have to check real income vs anticipated income. You need to look at the information you’re putting together from the viewpoint of the landlord. Would you accept you?

The application process for an apartment in New York City is all consuming. It is invasive. It is lengthy. If you have issues that are out of the ordinary then these are the things you have to work out before you go look at apartments and certainly before you apply for an apartment.

There are solutions for everything but don’t thing for one second that a landlord and/or management company isn’t going to find out about something just because you haven’t made full disclosure.