Met a landlord who actually read my credit report line by line

I was looking at a duplex in south Phoenix last month and the landlord pulled out a printed copy of my credit report right there on his front porch. He pointed at a medical collection from 3 years ago and asked me what happened. I told him it was a billing error from a clinic that took 6 months to fix, and he nodded and said he'd seen that before. He ended up approving me with a $200 extra deposit. Has anyone else had a landlord actually look at their report instead of just running a score?

4 comments

4 Comments

the_alex9d ago

Wait is this actually still happening in 2024? I feel like most landlords just check a number on a screen and make a snap call, you know how everything is automated now. But that guy sitting down and actually talking through the details with you sounds like he's from a different era, probably seen enough renters get screwed by medical bills to know it's not always a red flag. It's wild how we've gotten so comfortable letting algorithms make decisions that used to take five minutes of human conversation.

jenny_lee9d ago

Did you try explaining your situation in a simple letter or email before the interview? That way they see your side before they even meet you.

olivia6709d ago

Yeah "a different era" is right. It's not just renting either, I swear everything is automated to death now. You call customer service and it's a robot, you apply for a job and it's an AI filtering your resume, you try to get a doctor's appointment and the portal kicks you out if you don't fit some checklist. We just let machines make snap calls on stuff that used to take a real person five minutes to figure out. It's like we forgot that sometimes a simple conversation can clear up a whole mess of misunderstandings.

shane_bell9d agoMost Upvoted

Man, you're making me rethink how I saw this whole thing. I used to be one of those people who thought automation was just progress, you know, faster and more efficient. But hearing you lay it out like that with all those examples, it hits different. I never really stopped to think about how much a simple five minute chat with a real person could do. It's like we traded having someone actually listen for a computer that just scans for keywords. That part about medical bills being a red flag to a machine but a understandable story to a human is dead on. I guess I was so busy accepting the convenience I forgot what we were giving up for it.