Quote Originally Posted by Adam Strange View Post
Historically, banks won't lend you money to buy a house unless your household income is 2.4X the cost of the house. 3X seems excessive. The landlords are trying to get a richer clientele.
There's a few things going on from what I can understand.
For starters, we're in a college town, so there's high demand for rentals. Also, they charge extra rent for each person that shares the apartment. The understanding has been that if a student is renting an apartment, they must be from out of county, and so it's expected that the parents of the students will pay for some if not all the rent.

Also, due to the high demand, lots with homes are being torn down and multi-level apartment complexes are being built by the same developers who aren't local (probably from California). Even the cheaper apartments have been bought by these people. When I first moved out here (22 or so years ago), only a few apartments had this 3x requirement, and yes, they were in the nicer areas, with nicer apartments. I think the 3x demand started appearing more, in lesser neighborhoods, around the time when these developers were starting to push hard to buy up house lots to convert into apartments.

I feel like there's gotta be at least 1-2 other reasons why this has become such a widespread practice here, though.


Usually, the cost of property and the cost of rent is closely tied to how much money you can make by living in that area. High rents = high incomes. Of course, that is an average. When people are just starting out in their careers, it helps to have parental support.
That's what I would have thought. Unfortunately my daughter was born to me, I'm on disability, and so my income is below poverty line. I'm not eligible to cosign for her. Richard and I aren't actually married, but he's been kind enough to cosign for her before. Though he refuses to do it if she has a roommate. (understandable, he doesn't want to be held responsible for someone else) So my ability to help her is limited. I keep hinting to her that things might be easier financially if she moved somewhere else. But she wants to be near her friends, and where things are familiar to her. (If I wasn't with Richard, I'd have left this area years ago.)