Hey everyone.
My partner and I have found an apartment, and we plan to split the rent and everything else. However, the real estate agent told us that because we’re not married, the guarantee company will only consider my income and not my partner’s. However, my income alone is probably insufficient for rent, and I’m afraid that chances of rejection may be high.
I already received a call from 2 companies but none of them asked anything about my income.
It’s a bit strange because I know of friends and unmarried couples sharing a house with no problem. I don’t understand why they’re being so picky this time.
Does anyone have any experience regarding this? Do you think it’s going to be a problem?
Do you have any suggestions?
6 comments
Well how much % is the rent compared to your income?
Btw it might be possible to get both incomes considered if you tell them you are engaged (there’s no way to check that anyway).
As for me I qualified with my sole income even though we are sharing.
It may depend on the company but usually you don’t get a choice as the landlord will choose. As you aren’t married then at any point you could break up and one of you move out. That would make the chance of getting behind on your rent higher, which is a risk the company doesn’t want to take. Seems rational if a bit unfair.
I suggest you look for another apartment.
>I know of friends and unmarried couples sharing a house with no problem.
Typically, people wait till they have the amount of income considered sufficient by guarantor companies or have parents as a guarantor.
Then perhaps if your rent is around 50,000yen, you’ll be fine; if it’s over 60,000yen, you may have a tough time.
This is common in Japan. Even for Japanese couples, the same rule applies.
Under Japanese law, the rights of the tenant are very strong once a contract has been signed. If you are late in paying your rent, the landlord cannot force you out. For this reason, landlords screen risks extremely carefully before signing a contract.
After all, guarantee companies job is to assume the risk on your behalf in case you can’t pay the rent. As long as they cannot guarantee that you and your partner will not separate, they are only subject to the income of the contractor.
I live together with my girlfriend and we’re not married.
We just told them that we were planning to get married (just vaguely “in the future”) and that was enough to get them to view our joined incomes.
Our individual incomes are both sufficient to easily cover the rent so we never had that issue. In our case, the real estate agent defaulted to having my fiance as on the contract because she’s Japanese and I’m not (a bit racist but whatever, not bothered if we got the apartment).
As we were filling in the paperwork, my fiance mentioned in passing that my income was higher than hers and that I wasn’t an English teacher (lol) and then they were like “oh we can put you down as the tenant if you like??” but we were like “nah its fine”.
Also they put us down as 婚約者 without even asking us, which was funny but we are planning to get married anyway so we just let it go. It is weird how in Japan there’s no such thing as “unmarried couple”. You’re either a married couple or married couple-to-be.
I remember back when we considered going for UR, they said we would have to write a letter signed by us both saying that we were planning to get married within the 6 months. My response (of course) was “that’s none of your business, no thank you, goodbye”.
Other question – is your partner’s income higher or lower than yours?