Affordable rentals require much income verification

There’s a price to be paid for a lower-cost apartment: heavy paperwork, all meant to demonstrate that the tenant could use a hand in Hawaii’s sky-high rental economy.

Mark Toohey is an agent for Locations, LLC, the firm handling the leasing of units at the affordable rental projects, Six-Eighty and The Flats at Pu‘unui. The basic instruction to prospective tenants is given up front to ensure they’re prepared for the application.

He outlined the process at Six-Eighty, as an example, where the gross income could be no higher than $60,620 for an individual.

“We look at any basic criteria any landlord would check,” Toohey said.

“Are they on Megan’s List (of sex offenders)? Do they have good credit history? Do they have landlord history? These things are taken into account. “

Beyond those basics, the primary directive is this: Show us the money.

“We’re calculating literally every form of income they might have — in addition to salary, Social Security, pension, veteran’s benefits, food stamps, interest off accounts, sale of stocks, sale of large assets,” he said. “We do that to attempt to project future earnings over the next 12 months.”

This means pay stubs for the last three pay periods, the last 1040 tax form — that can catch end-of-year bonuses not reflected on pay stubs — bank records and all relevant financial documents. And cash savings or other liquid assets must be proven to be no greater than 125 percent of the maximum allowable income for the unit.

The point is, if you have more cash than that, you might qualify to be a buyer, not renter.

“If you have enough savings for a down payment, you can’t take an apartment away from someone who does not have income to buy,” Toohey said.