Me: Bad credit; My Fiance: Good credit; and renting an apt

[MelissaMadden79]

I'm getting married at the end of June to my fiance who is in the Army.  My fiance has good credit I do not.  I have about 9K in CC debt, I have a satisfied tax lien judgement from the state of Maryland for 2005 and I just finalized the agreement to rehab my defaulted student loan.  My fiance is being moved around the time of our wedding and so we will have to rent an apartment in our new city.  I am scared to death at the prospect of applying for an apartment with my fiance.  I am wondering if my fiance's credit along with the fact that our rent is included in my fiance's salary so there is a built in credibility there.  Will we have any problems renting an apartment with my bad credit?

[Jamex]

What are your FICO scores & income like, what are your fiance's, and how much are you looking to spend in rent per month? That's basically what the landlord is going to look at. Also, have you ever been late on your rent or evicted? Landlords especially care about how you've handled your apartment "debt" in the past.

I do think you have a shot - this time last year my FICOs averaged in the 570s, my girlfriend's were 730s, and we got a place. I think the key was that we both had perfect payment histories with our previous landlords and we kept our target rent modest in comparison to our income (a lot of landlords will rent to you as long as your rent is 33% or less of your monthly pay, we kept ours to 19%)