Please help Laurel find a home by answering her questions

I think the fact that you've worked at the same, prestigious company for 5 plus years should count for something. Maybe ask your broker to show you only privately owned places? Or search Craigslist for owner-only apartments?

I did that, actually, Mary! It's a good idea, and we've successfully charmed multiple landladies into offering us really good deals. But none of the privately owned apts have been nearly as nice as the ones in big buildings. Or as big. And unfortch, most of the "by owner" section of CL is still brokers, or else listing agents working for owners. It doesn't really mean much.

We may end up taking one of those landlady apts temporarily. It seems like a good building, nice people, cool landladies. Just the apt is smallish and the modern renovation is flimsy. And we'd have to move again inside of 6 months.

Thanks, everybody! We can keep discussing credit and stuff. My only remaining question is to confirm whether a guarantor commitment would detract from the guarantor's available income/equity if they're looking for a loan at the same time. If anyone can definitively answer that, that would be awesome.

A guarantor commitment does not detract from the guarantor's income/equity/credit-worthiness or anything like that. A guarantor is just agreeing to be a backup person for the landlord to sue if you don't pay your rent :) There's no database or credit reporting agency that will ever mention anything about them guaranteeing your lease.

Hope that helps. By the way, it's relatively difficult to get someone evicted in NYC and that's why landlords ask for so much documentation, etc. I spend all day explaining this stuff to worried parents offended and disgusted by the entire process of renting in NYC.

I forgot to mention that if it ever comes down to a court filing, the guarantor would likely be named in the suit. That's pretty much the only bad thing that could happen.

so this application i filled out (not in nyc)... the lady says in the preliminary credit check they don't show my current address (where i have lived for 2.5 years, and the address for my student loans and all bills). how do you fix this?

btw my FICO report shows the correct address. I will have to check my agency reports when i'm home.. curious.

I have no idea at all -- I made payments on things back in February that still haven't affected my credit score as far as I can tell. And they had an old address for me, too.

As far as I know, you have to contact the 3 agencies yourself to correct things (Experian, TransUnion, and er, something else) - they don't actively pick up info, only relay what others have reported to them.

equifax is the third, i believe.

so annoying, but she said the credit looked fine aside form the address discrepancy! this whole thing is so nerve-wracking!

the most annoying part is a medical bill that UR messed up YEARS ago by not properly processing my insurance and never fixing, that is still showing up as a 'collection'. a;lskdgj.