Worst Application Ever.

“I’m Lucky.” I once got an application for an apartment in Berkeley from a young single woman. On her application form, she said that she was a self-employed ‘holistic therapist.’ That’s one of those job titles can mean anything. She claimed to have a good income, but her income was completely verifiable. She said that most of her customers paid her in cash and that she didn’t file tax returns. I told her that unverifiable income doesn’t carry a lot of weight with landlords when reviewing rental applications. She said that she knew that; however, she kept saying: “You really should to rent this apartment to me” and she said it in a sly way as though there was some special reason that I should know about, but didn’t. After a while, my curiosity got the better of me and I asked her: “Why do you keep saying that?” She said: “Because I’m lucky, and if you rent this apartment to me, you will be lucky too. I bring good luck to landlords.” I asked her what she meant by that. She said: “Just a few days after I moved into my last apartment, my landlord’s mother was run over by a delivery truck and killed. He inherited a fortune. His mother had a lot more money than he thought she did.” I concluded that the point of this woman’s story was that she is lucky for landlords – – but not their mothers. I decided to take my chances of getting an unlucky tenant and rented my apartment to somebody else. As it turned out, the tenant I rented my apartment to actually was unlucky! He was a graduate student at U.C. Berkeley. A short while after he moved in, he broke a leg on a ski trip. He had a lot of difficulty getting to campus for several months while his leg was in a cast, and it was during the rainy season too.

Worst Application Ever.

E-mail Applications. Last month, I rented an apartment to a group of graduate students. I received several good applications for the place. Most of the applications came from people living outside this area and who applied by email. It is always awkward for a landlord to rent an apartment to people who he has not met and who have not seen his apartment. In most places, landlords will not rent apartments that way; however, in college towns like Berkeley, this is quite common, especially at this time of year, just before the start of a new school year. Taking rental applications by email can be tricky, so I am always on the lookout for suspicious questions from applicants. Here are some questions I got from email applicants last month that raised red flags for me:

  • “Your ad says ‘4 bedrooms.’ Are they all inside the apartment?”
  • “It says on your web site that you require photo I.D. I don’t have a photo I.D. Would you accept a letter from my parole officer instead?”
  • “Where is Berkeley?”