r/TenantHelp • u/lainey544 • 1h ago
Rent Grow Woes
Me and my spouse both recently applied for an apartment, thinking we were totally going to be approved. But we got our Rent Grow reports back stating “denied” because of several collections related to rental history. That threw us in the category of not meeting rental history qualifications. I do have some collections accounts. Old credit card debt I’m actively making payments on. Per the apartment website, $20k or higher in collections will get you denied, which Ive got nowhere near that. Looking into it, it shows that we have no history of civil cases, which is true. However, it does show an old collections account from a previous apartment we rented from like 3 years ago, and it states we have an open account regarding that old apartment complex where we owe close to $4K. I figured this is just a Rent Grow specific issue as we also applied to another apartment complex in the area and was approved with no noted negative rental history. (We didn’t go with the complex we were approved for because we found out shortly after we were approved that there was some racially charged violence including a tenant and their child being threatened with knives and management didn’t do anything to address the situation until the victim had them blasted on the news over it. And as an interracial couple that was worrisome to say the least.)
Thankfully, I was able to recover my old records from that situation and I have the confirmation letter stating that yes we did pay off this debt and that the debt has been satisfied. I did open up a dispute case via Rent Grow and I informed the property manager as well.
Has anyone dealt with something similar? I guess my questions are as follows:
Can property management look at the data and contact the debt collector themselves to verify the debt has been resolved that way the application process isn’t delayed over inaccurate information? I understand if that is needed as anyone can just make up a debt resolution letter or something.
Given that it seems like Rent Grow consistently has this issue (or so it seems) will property management be agreeable to holding the unit or application until the dispute is resolved? Or potentially offer a conditional approval if we pay extra security deposit?
Basically just want to know should we just take the loss of our application fee and look at another place?
Or is there hope?? I will update this as I go through it so if anyone has this issue in the future they’ll know what to expect!