This might be an uncommon question. How do we convince an individual landlord to rent to us?
The situation is that we’re looking to do major renovations to our condo that will require us being out for about 10-11 months. We’d like to sign a 1-year lease but are having trouble with individual landlords rejecting us. We have a very very weak rental history (we’re in our mid 40s and have only rented for 1 year in total our whole lives). Most of them want references which we don’t have. We can just show that we pay our monthly mortgage on time ($3700 plus $1080 in tax and strata for a total of $4780/month). We realize that we will be paying rent and mortgage at the same time. The renovations are paid for out of savings. We have a combined gross income of around $23.5k per month, so that should be enough to rent a $3500/month apartment even considering the mortgage? We have one pet as well.
I’d like to get landlords perspective on why individual landlords would be turning us down. Is the situation just too messy for them?