Scottsdale ranks No. 1 for rejecting renters
Owners are turning away almost 30% of applicants looking for apartments
About one out of three people trying to rent an apartment in Scottsdale are told they can’t move in.
Metro Phoenix’s high-end suburb leads the nation for the highest rate of rental applications rejected by apartment owners, according to a new national survey from Yardi’s RENTCafe.
Slightly more than 29 percent of people trying to rent in Scottsdale are turned down, according to the apartment research firm. Detroit has the second highest rental rejection rate of 27.4 percent, and Arlington, Texas, a Dallas suburb, is third with 26.8.
Scottsdale has the priciest apartments in metro Phoenix with average rent for a one bedroom at about $1,100. That’s about $250 higher than the average Valley apartment rent.
RENTCafe’s research found the average annual income of a renter approved in Scottsdale is about $64,000. The average income of someone turned down was $48,000.
The top reason apartment owners give for rejecting renter applications across the U.S. is late credit-card, car or other big monthly payments. Less than 10 percent of apartment renters are rejected over low credit scores.
Metro Phoenix residents with creditcard debt carried an average of $40,000 in 2016, according to U.S. Census and Federal Reserve reports analyzed by website Value Penguin. That ranks Phoenix at No. 171 among 211 cities tracked for the highest levels of credit-card debt.
Seattle; Portland, Oregon; San Diego; Washington; and Los Angeles had the highest rates of approvals for rental applications. The rejection rate for the cities was all below 10 percent.
Those cities’ residents have similar credit-card debt levels to Phoenix.
Mesa and Glendale also made RENTCafe’s top 20 list for cites with the highest rental rejection rates. About 23 percent of renters are told no in Mesa, while the rate is 20 percent in Glendale.
RENTCafe attributes some cities’ high rental rejection rates to a smaller supply of apartments. That could be true for Mesa and Glendale, where not many new apartments have gone up in the past decade. Scottsdale, however, has seen an apartment building boom during the past few years.
Tens of thousands of rental applications tapped through an online tenant screening service were analyzed for the RENTCafe research.