A WARNING about Standard Realty Associates

(My Original Blog Post: http://ping.fm/S6xH9)
This is to anyone who has applied or is thinking of applying for an apartment with Standard Realty Associates.

Make sure that before you submit any apartment application with Standard Realty Associates of 117 Waverly Street, New York, NY (www.ownernofee.com ; 212-777-1111), you confirm with a qualified representative of the company that the income you list on your application for yourself and/or your guarantor is in accordance with their rental policy (the applicant or guarantor*s income must be 45 times the monthly rent of the apartment, according to Standard Realty Associates). They failed to take notice of this detail on my application, which was clearly written, and did not initially inform us that we wouldn*t qualify. They proceeded to charge us a non-refundable $140 for 4 different credit reports. After receiving satisfactory results on these reports, they decided to reject my application based on the income of my guarantor (which did not equal the product of 45 times the monthly rent of the apartment). If Standard Realty Associates decides to look at your income after charging you for the credit check, and then announce that they*re not happy with it, they*ll either ask you to pay another month*s rent up-front (on top of the first month, last month and security deposit), or they*ll deny your application. This is what happened to me.

When I contacted a manager, Ken, to inquire about their rental policies and the reasons for rejecting my application, he hung up on me. When I spoke to him a second time to ask why they would go ahead with a credit check knowing that my guarantor*s income did not meet their requirement, he said that someone had “made a mistake,” and offered no resolution. We*d given them $140 dollars for 4 credit checks (2 applicants and 2 guarantors), which will not be returned, in addition to squandering over a week*s worth of time until they realized they would not be accepting our application as it was submitted.

Additionally, Standard Realty Associates unprofessionally handles serious applicants, and incompetently attempts to verify the income of applicants and guarantors by calling their employers unannounced, requesting verbal verification of employment and salary over the phone. The accurate and appropriate way to do this, which is a common practice in any industry, is to request a copy of a tax statement (e.g. a W2 form), which states a person*s annual income, rather than verbally confirming with a person*s employer, who could easily be lying or misinformed.

The intent of this post is to inform people in the apartment renting market that these are not good business practices, and that obvious indicators for evaluating potential tenants were blatantly not followed by Standard Realty Associates.