Renting with no income

Full year upfront? That is king at least with me it is. You should have no problem. Where are you looking?

Mostly looking on the UWS.

Although I can easily pay the full year, I'd rather not. I was hoping that the landlord would be able to look at my bank balance and see that I had enough cash in hand.

jpl, sure but you could spend it the next day. I would probably take 6 months and then lease you month to month. Do you have any references?

You're asking an owner to share the risk of your startup. Just pay the one or two years up front and be done with it.

I'm with SteveF on this. I understand your wanting to hang onto your cash, but look at it from the landlord's perspective. He might also want to see proof of past employment stability.

Two years ago, you would have been laughed at. But today I think many, if not most, will seriously consider taking a year upfront and/or taking six months' worth of deposit.

he..i would seriously consider taking 6 month/year upfront anytime. That is money to be invested to make more money. It's like getting more rent. i still would need some reliable references and a credit check.

Get to know the going rates in the area and offer to pay a year up front with a low bid. Don't be surprised if they also ask for 2 months security. If you have cash to negotiate, use it to your advantage. Expect that in many cases the landlord would want you to pay a year in advance with no income anyway.

i also was self-employed when I moved back to new york and i filled out the application and i worried they would come back and say no but I got the apartment and paid one month rent and one month security...just don't say anything.

I tried to pay a year up front on a one-year lease 10 years ago, and I was told it wasn't legal.

Thanks, for the feedback, everyone. I think I'm resigned to putting up a signicant amount up-front.

"I tried to pay a year up front on a one-year lease 10 years ago, and I was told it wasn't legal."

It probably was a rent stabilized unit, where by statute you can't collect more than 1 month security deposit. there's lots of regulations about rent stabilized units which don't apply to market units.

jpl: you will probably have a lot easier time renting from someone who owns one individual Condo unit than a building owner because they will probably be less sophisticated about such things, will be more anxious to rent (if the unit is vacant, 100% of their property is vacant), they won't have some set of rules which they would have to make an exception to in order to rent to you, etc.

It is called an asset approval - in lieu of income -- it required a 4 mo. deposit for my friend. Once the income started flowing, the deposit was reduced to 1 mo.

Rental buildings accept it all the time...

jpl: I haven't been in that specific situation here in NY, but my sense is that different landlords have different priorities in what they look at for tenants. If you have a big management company with a lot of vacancies, I think they'd be less fussy. (Since it is a renter's market - - God help you if this were a super tight market, but fortunately it's not.)

I think some landlords will put much more weighting on your credit record. So if your credit is spotless, your past landlord references are good, and you can demonstrate that you have that cash in the bank that you do, you would have a better shot, maybe even without having to put a lot of cash down.

I would suggest taking a look at Hell's Kitchen if that neighborhood will work for you. It's considered more of a fringe area (far from subway at its far western ends), but there is an absolute deluge of new inventory coming on the market. There's 1 building just finished at 37th & 10th Ave., a companion building at 37th & 10th/11th, the two new of Silverstein Towers at 42nd & 11th, plus all the existing towers built in the past 10 years that will probably have to offer incentives to keep tenants from going to the new buildings.

Good luck!

"It probably was a rent stabilized unit, where by statute you can't collect more than 1 month security deposit"

Possibly... I had no idea at the time. It was in Hell's Kitchen, and was $1000/mo, for a studio (this was in '99). The guy showing it to me said "do you have trouble breathing"; I answered "no... why?". 'Because the only air from outside is through the a/c.' I can't believe I was gonna give that idiot $12K up-front for a year in that dump. Glad he turned me down.