First off I am an apartment locator and I have been in the market for over 7 years and I have specialized in helping people with second chance issues for all of those years. Dallas/Fort Worth has hundreds of thousands of apartment homes, of those less than 100,000 are corporately managed and of those apartments there are about 2000 apartments that are willing to work with people with broken leases, evictions, or property debts.
The degrees of what they will work with are anywhere from debt paid in full to working with three rental history problems with no age restriction. As you can imagine there are very few apartment that will work with three rental history problems, and even less that will work with a rental history problem combined with a felony. Ultimately time is your friend in any case. The older your past problems get, the more apartment communities will work with your situation.
In any given major area in the metroplex, I can provide a list of ten or more properties to someone who has a broken lease over one year old. For an eviction it would need to be more than two years to get the same result. Anything less and your results are not going to be very many. There are properties out there that will work with someone going through an eviction, but you have to be willing to pay at least one months rent as a deposit, and your selection will be limited. Also the area will greatly affect your options, the bigger and more populated areas will have more options than the far reaching suburbs. The higher end more expensive areas will have less to no options compared to a suburb that is dense with apartments, that is fifteen or twenty minutes away from urban living.
Higher deposit is the key, the properties that work with broken leases or evictions negate the risk by taking on a higher deposit from the renter. Almost every second chance properties is going to have a higher deposit when you have any kind of credit or rental history problems. This should be expected around one months rent as a deposit when you go to a second chance property. Some will offer specials but very few right now in the given market, so just know going into it, you will have to come out of pocket in order to get approved for an apartment.
So in summary:
- There are thousands of apartment that will work with second chance issues.
- The less you owe and the older the rental discrepancy gets the more options you will have to choose from.
- Be open to an expanded area, and try and include a large city; Dallas, Fort Worth, and Arlington
- Expect to pay a higher deposit, and know it could be around one months rent.
As always I hope this information was helpful, and if you have more questions or would like free help finding an apartment, please go to SecondChanceApartment.com.
Bryan Bjerke
Spirit Real Estate
