Renting with a Broken Lease

View this article on the Austin Apartment Specialists Slideshare account

How apartments work with a broken lease is a source of confusion for a lot of renters in this position.  I want to start by stating that a broken lease IS NOT an eviction.  A broken lease could be anything from owing money to a property for damages, utility bills, or rent due from not fulfilling the lease.  Evictions and broken leases are considered separately during the renter’s qualification process apartments go through.

Every management company assess your broken lease differently.  The tend to categorize them into money owed and no money owed.  The majority of Austin rental properties will not take an applicant that still owes money to another rental property.  On the other hand, if you have a broken lease with no money owed to the property, it is much less likely to affect your application.  Even if the original broken lease resulted in you legally owing the money property, but you have since paid the balance to $0, it is less likely to affect your application.

If you have a broken lease with money owed, some rental properties that have a less thorough computerized qualification process discover your debt to another rental property because it shows up on your credit report.  In these cases if does not appear there, then they may not to discover it.  Others that do a more thorough manual qualification process are likely to call your previous rental properties, and will discover the debt then.

Occasionally an apartment will take circumstances into account when considering an applicant that has a broken lease and may allow you to pay an extra deposit if the money owed to the other property is less than a certain breaking point, for example $1500.  Other apartments may allow you to arrange a payment plan with the owed property based on a minimum amount each month in order to consider the broken lease ‘no money owed’.

If you have a broken lease, whether you owe money on it or not, you would benefit greatly from an apartment locator or apartment finder.  Our expertise and personal relationship with most property management will help you navigate the rental waters and our service is free to you.