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You’re living in an apartment, and while your living situation is alright, you want to improve it. You potentially found a new place that’s great once your lease ends. The problem is they perform a credit card check or want a higher credit score than you need to qualify. That’s OK. You have several options to help you improve your credit score while renting with bad credit.
Moving Help® will provide several options that can assist you with figuring out which option might be best for you.
Renting With Bad Credit
Renting with bad credit isn’t the be-all and end-all. Since you managed to score renting an apartment — whether it’s your first time or not — you have a good foundation to improve.
You’ll just need to find an easy, manageable way to improve your score while not hurting yourself financially long term.
Find Ways to Get Approved
If you don’t have time to build credit in traditional ways, you can always find other ways to get approved. Here are five ways to do it.
- Show you have a high income
- Willing to pay a larger security deposit
- Pay more rent upfront
- Get a guarantor or cosigner
- Get a roommate to sign the lease with you
6 Ways to Build Credit While Renting
You have several options to build your credit score while renting. We’ll briefly discuss six options below.
- Report rent payments: Some apartment complexes offer services that have a monthly fee where the third-party company will report your rent payments to the credit bureaus. By paying your monthly rent on time, it’ll help improve your credit score. Of course, if your apartment complex doesn’t have this service, you can always report your rent payments to the credit bureaus yourself using a third-party service to assist you.
- Open a secured credit card: If you’re not having luck getting approved for a credit card with the traditional route, try a secured credit card. Basically, you make a refundable deposit to secure the card, and then you can use it and spend it like a regular credit card.
- Open a credit card: If you can be approved for a credit card, open one that has a lower maximum credit line. If possible, try to get a credit card that doesn’t have an annual fee.
- Make on-time payments: Whether you have a credit card, a loan, or another credit line, you always want to make sure all your payments are on-time. Payment history represents 35 percent of your credit score calculation — the highest percentage among all the categories.
- Keep credit utilization low: Along with making on-time payments, you should keep credit utilization low. The lower the credit utilization among all your credit lines, the better your score will be for you.
- Become an authorized user: If a family member or friend is willing to help you out, ask whether you can be an authorized user onto their credit card. It’ll help you build good credit, and their good credit score also should assist in helping you build a higher score.
Renting With Bad Credit Doesn’t Have to Be a Burden
Even while renting, you can still find ways to improve your credit score. Renting with bad credit right now doesn’t mean you can’t improve it to help you in the future. You can take steps now while renting to help improve your score.
Remember, your credit score will always be with you, so it’s important to check it, review it, and try to improve it. If you need help with moving in the future, check out Moving Help for high-quality moving labor.
