Credit Scores & Credit Monitoring What To Do About Bad Credit How Renting an Apartment Will Affect Your Credit Score By LaToya Irby LaToya Irby LaToya Irby is a credit expert who has been covering credit and debt management for The Balance for more than a dozen years. She's been quoted in USA Today, The Chicago Tribune, and the Associated Press, and her work has been cited in several books. learn about our editorial policies Updated on March 30, 2022 Reviewed by Charlene Rhinehart In This Article View All In This Article How Applying Affects Your Credit Score Are Rent Payments On Your Credit Report? How Reporting Helps Your Credit Score Do Late Payments Affect Your Credit? Using a Credit Card to Pay Your Rent Are Cosigners Affected by Rent Payments? Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) Photo: © murat sarica / E+ / Getty Your monthly rent is one of the most important bills that you pay each month. All of those timely rent payments should count for something, right? In a sense, renting an apartment is like a 12-month loan that you pay back in monthly installments. At least that’s the justification landlords use when they check your credit report before renting an apartment to you. From that perspective, timely rent payment should help your credit score, especially since late rent payments and eviction can completely wreck your credit score, which would not only ruin your ability to rent another apartment, but also make it harder to get approved for credit cards and loans. How Applying for Rentals Affects Your Credit Score Many landlords pull your credit report when you're approving your rental application. The hard inquiry that comes from a credit check can affect your credit score. Inquiries are 10% of your credit score, but fortunately, apartment hunting may be treated the same as mortgage or auto loan rate shopping. A FICO executive confirmed to The Balance that multiple identifiable tenant screening-related inquiries are included in the special FICO Score inquiry treatment logic. In other words, multiple apartment-hunting inquiries are treated as just a single inquiry as long as they're completed in the same time frame. Not all landlords or leasing agents pull your credit information to qualify you for a rental. Applying for an an apartment won't hurt your credit if there's no credit check in the process. The application also won't hurt your credit score if the landlord uses a service that does a soft credit check. You can ask the landlord for their process to find out whether there's a credit review involved. Are Rent Payments On Your Credit Report? More recently, some apartment complexes have begun using a variety of services to report rent payments. All three major credit bureaus offer landlords some rent-reporting capabilities. Experian and TransUnion both offer services to landlords, and Equifax has partnered with third-party rent-reporting platforms to report rental information. There are a few third-party companies that work with consumers directly to collect and report information on rent payments: ClearNow, PayYourRent, Cozy, and RentTrack are a few examples. How Rent Reporting Helps Your Credit Score While there has been some progress in credit reporting of timely rent payments, it’s not widespread. If you rent from a smaller company or an individual landlord, it’s less likely that your rent payments will be reported to the credit bureaus. Even when rent payments are included on your credit report, they’re not guaranteed to help your credit score. According to FICO, only a small number of consumers see a significance effect on their credit scores after having rental added to their credit reports. Note Even if rental data doesn't make a major difference in your credit score, it can help if a landlord manually reviews your credit report looking for positive trade lines. Do Late Rent Payments Affect Your Credit? On the downside, renting can hurt your credit score in some instances. For example, if you're late on your rent payments or break your lease, get evicted, or fail to pay any move-out fees, and the landlord reports an unpaid balance to any of the three credit bureaus, that will hurt your credit score. Past-due rental balances can also be sent to a collection agency that could report the account on your credit report. Note Your credit report might show an unpaid balance that resulted from an eviction, but the actual eviction would not appear on your credit report. Evictions become a public record in your credit report if your previous landlord sues you, and a judgment is filed against you. Using a Credit Card to Pay Your Rent You can use a credit card to pay your rent and boost your credit score in an indirect way. Open a credit card, and use it to pay your rent (if your landlord accepts credit cards as a payment method), then pay your credit card balance in full each month. The timely credit card payments will help boost your credit score. Note Some landlords may charge a processing fee if you use a credit card to pay your rent. Are Cosigners Affected by Rent Payments? Renters with bad credit or no credit may need a cosigner to get approved for an apartment. It's important to know how cosigning will affect your credit before agreeing to put your name on the line for an apartment you won't live in Cosigning a rental agreement will impact your credit the same as if you were the sole tenant of the apartment, even if you're not living in the apartment you cosigned for. When there's a credit check for the application, the cosigner's credit is impact. Any payment reporting will be included on the cosigner's credit report as well. A debt collection resulting from non-payment will impact the cosigner's credit, even if monthly payments weren't regularly reported to the credit bureaus. Many landlords don't contact a cosigner until the balance is seriously past due. Cosigners have to be even more diligent about making sure monthly rent payments are made on time so their credit isn't negatively impacted by late rent payments. Timely rent payments may help your credit if your landlord subscribes to a credit reporting service or if you pay for a third-party reporting service. Late payments, on the other hand, often only affect your credit if a severely late balance is reported by a collection agency. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) What credit score is needed to rent an apartment? The credit score you need to rent an apartment varies by landlord. Some landlords expect good credit, while others are okay with fair or even poor credit if you have adequate income. Landlords may also be more concerned with evictions, collections, and foreclosures than with your credit. What is considered good credit? A good credit score is a score of 670 or higher. A score of 740 to 799 is considered very good, and a score of 800 or higher is considered excellent. Credit scores range from 300 to 850. Each credit bureau has its own credit scores, and those may vary. For example, you may have a score of 745 with two bureaus and 735 with another. Was this page helpful? Thanks for your feedback! Tell us why! Other Submit Sources The Balance uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy. Federal Trade Commission. "Renting an Apartment? Be Prepared for a Background Check." Fair Issac Corporation. "Credit Checks: What Are Credit Inquiries and How Do They Affect Your FICO® Score?" TransUnion SmartMove. "Go Behind the Score With Tenant Credit Reports." Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. "Could Late Rent Payments or Problems With a Landlord Be in My Credit Report?" Experian. "Finally, Your Rent Payments Can Give Your Credit Scores a Boost." Fair Isaac Corporation. "Truth Squad: Can Scoring Rental Data Vastly Improve Credit Access?" Experian. "Does Breaking a Lease Affect Your Credit?" Experian. "How Does an Eviction Affect Your Credit?" Experian. "Can I Pay My Rent With a Credit Card?" Los Angeles County Consumer and Business Affairs. "Improving Your Credit Record." Experian. "How to Get an Apartment With Bad Credit." Progressive. "What to Know Before Cosigning a Lease." Quicken Loans. "How to Rent an Apartment With Bad Credit." Realtor.com®. "Having a Cosigner Can Help You Land a Rental."