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Comment by chipperyman573 | Hacker News Reader

>Prevent landlords from pulling credit history. Your finances are not their business.

I disagree, if you have a terrible credit history, leasing to you may be very risky. They aren't loaning you money, but they are trusting that you will have the money every month to pay them with.

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>They aren't loaning you money, but they are trusting that you will have the money every month to pay them with.

Even more importantly than that: the lessor gives the lessee custody and (limited) care-taking responsibilities over what, in most cases, represents a significant investment of capital.

Far more importantly than that: the landlord, usually morgaged, is making a tenuous claim of ownership of the tenant's home. If the landlord does not keep up with his payments the tenant and his family face the prospect of disruption and upheaval of far greater import than any monentey shortfall the landlord might risk. Therefore the tenant has by far the greater claim to an assurance of the landlord's credit worthiness than vice versa.

i agree. In fact, when i signed the lease, i handed over a check for first and last month's rent plus a security deposit equal to another month's rent.

it's me, the tenant, who is loaning money to my landlord.

It cost a fortune to evict tenants who don't pay their rent.

Then they should be forced to positively report that you are agreeing to the terms of your lease. It shouldn't be a one way street. Right now, there is nothing for most land lords to really see on credit reports except for seriously cases of rental delinquency (evictions will show up, but these are outstandingly rare). You get dinged for them looking at what will largely be irrelevant information to your landlord. How I manage my credit cards has no correlation to how I've how honored my apartment leases. It makes no sense for someone to deny you a place to live because of other outstanding debts, often these debts do not even follow the same financial contracts or have the same importance in many people's lives.

I've responded to similar sentiments in another comment within this thread, but just to note you misquoted me. I am not sure if that was intentional or not.

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