
How to find an apartment in San Francisco during the tech boom - jevanish
http://jasonevanish.com/2012/05/20/sf-startup-survival-guide-how-to-find-an-apartment-in-san-francisco/
======
rwmj
Missing option: (11) work remotely and live wherever you want.

Red Hat's virtualization team is based all around the world, in offices but
also many remotees. I'm one of them and I like nothing more than sitting in my
cottage garden on a sunny day with a laptop and wifi connection. It's a great
place to think.

~~~
ericabiz
Agreed. I lived in the Bay Area for 10 years and while it's nice there, there
are other places that are equally nice without the hassle of having to pay so
much in rent. Think of it this way: Even if you cash out rather nicely from a
startup (as I did), you _still_ won't be able to afford to buy a house
outright unless you want to go back to work right away.

I left for Austin, TX and I truly love it here. I'm running a tech company
here, too, and so far we haven't had any problems finding talent--even a
Python developer!

I wrote an article about living outside of the Valley, and whether it's worth
it for you, here: <http://www.erica.biz/2012/austin-vs-silicon-valley/> Nearly
2,000 people have read it, and there is some interesting discussion in the
comments.

------
citricsquid
> He who hesitates, is lost.

I tried to be the super flexible tenant recently. I needed to move 200 miles
and I found the PERFECT place (<http://imgur.com/a/XpksU>) so I contacted the
letting agency and asked for a viewing, they gave me a date a couple of days
later so I booked my train tickets. Day of the viewing I get a call that it's
cancelled, that sucks but we can re-arrange, so we re-arrange for a few days
later and I swallow the loss on my train tickets (about $150) and order some
more (this time paying a premium for refundable tickets) and again they
cancel, so I re-arrange (and get a ticket refund, yay!), this time the viewing
is for a day later so the tickets I needed were going to be $400 for ordering
so late and so I decide whatever I'll go first class; it's only $100 extra and
I can work from the train. Next day I go to the station, collect my tickets
and board the train: finally I'm going to get to view my new home! My heart
was set on the apartment... anyway 10 minutes into the journey I get a call,
the viewing is cancelled and the apartment has been withdrawn from the market
and unless I'm willing to _buy_ it for $1m I can't live there... so I'm
sitting in first class on a train using $500 tickets for no reason. Hurrah!

Anyway moral of the story is renting sucks and moving long distance also
sucks, good article, next time I move a long distance I think I'll follow the
advice and stay in the new place and look for apartments, much easier than
travelling the entire distance frequently just to view.

------
steve8918
Renting in SOMA right now is crazy, and 1 brs in the heart of SOMA near 4th
and King are going for over $3000/month. If cost is an issue, places like
SOMA, PacHeights, etc, are not good choices because it's super expensive. The
danger with renting in SOMA is that unless you're moving into an old
apartment, there is no rent control. If rent prices go up next year, you could
find yourself paying $500+/month more next year.

Nob Hill, etc, has terrible, terrible parking. I have a good friend that lives
there that I no longer visit unless it's in the middle of the day on Saturday,
because of the terrible parking, you could literally spend 1 hr looking for
parking after 6pm. If parking is not an issue (no car or get a scooter), then
it's a viable option, but not having a car in the Bay Area ends up being
severely limiting.

There are plenty of other cost-effective places on the west side of SF that
can go for less than half the price of SOMA. For someone new moving into the
area, my advice would be to get a cheap single place in Outer Sunset with
hopefully a short-term lease, and then once you meet more people, you can band
together with people that you know well and rent a bigger apartment somewhere
else in the city. Signing a lease with someone that you don't know has
tremendous long-tail risk, so I would take the hit in terms of moving a bit
further away when you first move to SF, and do a lot of due diligence and get
to know the city and your potential roommates better.

Another viable option is to not live in the city, especially if you don't work
in the city. Places along the peninsula are much cheaper, and if you do work
in FiDi or SOMA it's probably more cost effective to rent a place outside of
SF and Caltrain it in.

My own strategy is:

    
    
      1) Check Craigslist once an hour, or more depending on how much web surfing I'm doing.
      2) If I find a place in an area that I like, I immediately contact them and ask for a showing that day or as soon as possible.
      3) I come with all my documentation ready, including my checkbook.
      4) If I like the place, I immediately submit an application.
      5) Continue looking at other apartments, because they're no guarantee that I will get this one.
    

I've never personally heard of the law that says that you have to rent to the
first qualified applicant, and it sounds unenforceable, so I wouldn't count on
it. How do you determine who is "qualified"?

~~~
trimbo
> There are plenty of other cost-effective places on the west side of SF that
> can go for less than half the price of SOMA

Exactly! Look at where Muni and BART end up and then look at places to rent in
those locations. West Portal, Glen Park, Noe Valley, etc. There are a lot of
cool choices with public transportation if you start looking.

~~~
earl
Friends don't let friends ride muni. I've ridden public transport all over the
world and never been in physical danger on public transport before. Riding
muni it happened multiple times in 16 months.

Not to mention it's slow, untimely, and crap.

~~~
kenko
I've ridden public transport all over the world as well, including in San
Francisco and Oakland, and the only place I've ever felt even moderately
uncomfortable was in Chicago. Muni does suck, but I've only got anecdotal
reports that it's _unsafe_.

~~~
gtani
Well i rode MUNI a few days a week for 15 years becuase otherwise I'd get
$300/week in parking tickets, but read last month's anecdotal stories in the
Chron and Examiner

[https://www.google.com/search?q=sf+muni+bus+robbery&ie=u...](https://www.google.com/search?q=sf+muni+bus+robbery&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-
US:official&client=firefox-a)

------
otterley
You might also want to consider living in Oakland instead of San Francisco and
taking BART to the city to work. My rent is 1/3 less and my commute (20
minutes door-to-door) is much shorter than that of many of my colleagues who
live in the city.

Oakland is a big, heterogeneous city, with really nice districts that offer
great dining, bars, and the usual city trappings.

~~~
benmccann
That sounds like a great way to get murdered
(<http://www.neighborhoodscout.com/ca/oakland/crime/>). What are some of the
places that are better or should be avoided?

~~~
jsprinkles
You're just as likely to be murdered in San Francisco, and statistics really
don't mean shit except scaring people like you. The number of people being
murdered in drug violence and other crimes has a very negligible impact on the
probability of a mid-twenties software developer getting murdered.

It's extremely amusing how much people worry about being killed by thugs in
places they've never been, when they're far more likely to be killed by a
dumbass texting on 580.

~~~
benmccann
Guess humor/sarcasm doesn't always come across when written. I lived in
downtown Cleveland for a year or two and while Oakland has worse crime
statistics it's probably not too much worse. There was someone murdered on my
doorstep when I lived there, but I still generally felt safe. It is something
to be cognizant of. Even in the good parts of town, I'd hesitate to be outside
alone at night, which isn't a concern I have where I live now. And there are
parts of town that I wouldn't venture into at all much like anywhere.

------
jkincaid
Obviously there's a lot of demand in SOMA, but one suggestion to anyone
thinking of living there: spend some time wandering around, both during the
day and during the evening, and see if you like the vibe of the neighborhood
(this advice holds true for any neighborhood, really). I say this because I
lived in an area that seemed desirable — about 5 minutes away from the 4th &
King Caltrain, at 4th and Brannan, and, while it didn't seem so bad at the
time, in hindsight I've come to realize that I really wasn't very happy there.

It's very convenient for work, but it doesn't feel like a neighborhood at all.
Everything seems to close around 8pm and most of your friends probably aren't
going to be hanging out around there. Yes, there are a handful of cafes around
and you can find a few blocks that are busier, but in general it just feels
like a generic chunk of tall buildings — I found it pretty gloomy.

~~~
aliston
I couldn't agree more. SOMA is a terrible place to live if you're under 30 and
want urban nightlife. SOMA has some cool places with a bit of character...
District, 25 Lusk and 21st Amendment, but on the whole it feels either very
sterile or very industrial. If I had it to do over again, I would have braved
the 20 minute commute and lived in somewhere that had more culture... the
haight, mission, pac heights or (gasp) marina.

~~~
usaar333
There's always SW SOMA (11th st) which is quite different from 2nd/3rd.

------
crcsmnky
You put a lot of work into this article and wrote quite a few great tips when
looking for a place to live in SF.

Unfortunately you undermined the entire post with your "immigrants" comment.
In fact you made yourself look like a huge bigot. That sucks because it was
otherwise well written and useful.

It's sad that this is going largely unnoticed by the rest of the comments on
this post.

~~~
dudeguy999
Haha. I hadn't realized that PC has come so far that you are no longer allowed
to recognize or comment on immigrant neighborhoods.

There's lots of poor people and Spanish speaking people in the mission. This
is good if you like Taquerias, bad if you dislike grime. If you don't fit in
with homeless, hipster, or Latin culture, you will feel like an outsider. Some
people may like it, some people may not. But if you don't like it, you are no
longer allowed to say so!

I'm guessing that his offense is not embracing Latin culture. It is okay to
dislike homeless culture, because everyone does, or hipster culture, since it
is predominantly White. But you aren't allowed to dislike Latin culture, since
it is non-European and therefore protected. Interesting.

~~~
potatolicious
Have you read the quote? Or are you assuming that all uses of the word
"immigrant" are innocent and above reproach?

~~~
dudeguy999
Oh, I get it. He's saying he doesn't want to live in a neighborhood where the
only culture on offer is hipster, homeless, or Latin. And he's not allowed to
think that, at least out loud, because Latin culture is non-White and
therefore holy and infinitely lovable. He is guilty of crimethink.

~~~
potatolicious
As opposed to neighborhoods where the only culture on offer is American?

Also, "homeless" is not a culture.

Author is very obviously complaining about the _presence_ of hipsters,
homeless folk... and, well, _immigrants_ , and seems to think that his
aversion to such people is shared by many others. Judging by rent prices in
the Mission and public opinion, this does not hold _any_ water whatsoever.

Author is entitled to think whatever he damn well wants, but we are also
entitled to judge his commentary on their own merits. And please, don't come
to this table with 1984-bullshit whenever people are inclined to call a duck a
duck. We really ought to make a term for it like we have for Godwin.

~~~
dudeguy999
I don't like to live in Spanish speaking neighborhoods because I don't speak
Spanish. I enjoy the food and the low prices, I don't enjoy the culture. If
you don't speak English in America, you tend to be poor and less educated,
which means you and I will have less in common. I fully realize I am not
allowed to say this in Liberal America because this makes me a DISGUSTING
BIGOT, so I don't post this under my real name account. But I admire the
energy that you Right Thinking people put into your witchhunts.

~~~
potatolicious
> _"If you don't speak English in America, you tend to be poor and less
> educated"_

Such as the Asian immigrant population.

Which, last I checked, is experiencing quotas at Ivy League schools because
they're getting in at rates much, much higher than any other race, and tend to
come from backgrounds of higher education, even if their parents' English is
poor.

You're trying to generalize your argument to minimize the appearance of being
racist - but your argument doesn't actually generalize beyond the Latino
community, which by and large _does_ fit your description. So really, your
objection isn't against "people who speak poor English", it's against Latinos.

> _" I fully realize I am not allowed to say this in Liberal America because
> this makes me a DISGUSTING BIGOT"_

Nah. From your own self-description I'd characterize you as an ivory-tower
elitist (ironically, something conservatives tend to accuse of Liberal
America) - you know, inability to find common ground with people with low-SES
and low-education and such... Race does seem to play as a factor for you, but
I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt when you say it does not. But
of course, I don't know you in real life, so such judgments are rarely wise.

This argument isn't going anywhere productive, so I'm going to step out of it
with this: your _exact_ same rationalizations have been used against Blacks,
and smells very close to the same arguments we hear coming out of the "I'm not
anti-gay, I'm pro-marriage" camp. If it quacks...

~~~
dudeguy999
I wonder how many of the second generation Asian students flooding Ivy League
schools come from poor, non-English speaking ethnic ghettos? I'd guess not
many. All the people I knew who fit that description in college went to good
high schools. How good are the high schools in Chinatown?

For what it's worth, I wouldn't want to live in Chinatown either. Or any of
the White non-English ethnic ghettos that used to exist a few decades ago.

I think calling people "bigot" happens too quickly. We should show some
restraint.

------
philp
Read this post right up to the following line, "There’s also huge differences
from neighborhood to neighborhood as you are unlikely to find someone
interested in the Mission (hipsters, homeless and _immigrants_ )"

Pretty repulsive point of view IMHO.

EDIT: I am a recent immigrant to the United States

~~~
sentiental
Yes, I also found this disgusting. You know, the people he's calling
immigrants are actually the people that have lived there for generations.

~~~
wyclif
There's actually no negative connotation to the noun "immigrant."

~~~
philp
You're absolutely right. But reading this article the author seems to imply a
negative connotation by saying you'd be hard pressed to find somebody willing
to live in the mission because of "hipsters, homeless and immigrants".

~~~
trefn
My interpretation of that paragraph was that no single person was likely to be
interested in all three of the neighborhoods mentioned because they're all so
different.

~~~
wahnfrieden
No, they're portrayed as undesirables. If he had said the neighborhood was
diverse, that would be a positive light. Instead he's lumping them together
with homeless and hipsters (a derogatory term).

------
pemulis
If you don't have any friends you can stay with in San Francisco, a good
alternative is booking a bed in a hostel for a few weeks. They're cheap (as
low as $25/day, if you're willing to share a room with a few people),
centrally located, and sometimes offer perks like free breakfast and coffee.
You should take a few extra precautions with your valuables -- I keep my
laptop, wallet, and phone next to me when I sleep, instead of putting them in
the locker -- but most of the people who pass through are young travelers.
There are plenty of options to choose from in the Tendernob, which is
basically a hostel/student district, and not nearly as bad as this blog post
makes it sound.

~~~
jarek
Unless you are a very light sleeper, it's way easier to steal a laptop out of
your arms than out of a locker if you have in-room lockers.

~~~
pemulis
I sleep in the top bunk with my backpack between my body and the wall, which
would make it really difficult to steal anything without waking me up. I don't
totally trust the lockers, since every lock small enough to fit them is
trivial to pick or just slice through with bolt cutters when the room is
empty. Honestly, though, most of the people who pass through the hostel are
rich young people on backpacking trips. The only thing I have to worry about
them stealing is stuff I leave unattended in the bathroom.

------
azylman
I'm looking to make this move in August and some of the advice here won't work
for me.

For instance, I can't get a reference from a past landlord or a list of past
landlords - I'm just graduating college and have lived in on-campus housing my
whole time.

I'm hoping having a very good credit score and a very good offer letter in
hand will solve this issue, but I'm not sure.

Additionally, I can't move out mid-month and look for an apartment starting at
the beginning of the next - my job starts mid-month and I've moving out at the
beginning.

Any advice for how to deal with these situations? Thanks!

~~~
potatolicious
There are several ways to resolve your situation, few of which you will find
palatable... which really sucks:

\- Rent a less desirable place. Desirable places in SF will have easily 20
people lined up out front, with the landlord taking his/her pick of the crowd
based on income, credit, and references - and as a recent grad you will lose
on all 3 counts.

\- Seek roommate situations. Houses are more flexible about all of the above
criteria and care more about personality, this is where you might have an edge
(I don't know, I don't know you at all).

\- Live outside the city. This is going to be a real bummer sometimes - your
friends will want to hang out in the Mission till the crack of dawn, but you'd
have to hop the BART or Caltrain before midnight to get home. But places
outside SF proper experience far, far, far less competition.

And here's the one that works, but really stinks:

\- Offer to pay more than face value of apartment. This is just insult upon
injury - but it does work. Odds are, if you have a Unreasonably Wealthy
Startup Guy(tm) viewing the apartment with you, _he/she_ will bid the
apartment up. It's become more and more common, and that's incredibly
depressing.

------
xiaoma
This is very interesting. I just moved to San Francisco from Beijing, myself!

I got here at about the beginning of the month, stayed 3 days in a hostel, 4
more days at a friend's place in Oakland and then signed a lease for a place
in the heart of Chinatown. It's a fairly small room and the kitchen and
showers are shared, but at $500/month all my acquaintances are saying I got a
fairly good deal.

My trick was I got the landlord's number from a friend in Beijing the week
before I left. Having friends in Oakland was just total luck. I'd met them
years ago in Taiwan! All in all, Chinatown is pretty nice. It's safe, there's
a ton of fresh produce to buy all over the place and things are cheap.

The two things which would be downsides for some are the hilliness and the
Cantonese speaking community. I hated the hills when I was carrying my stuff
across town, but now I generally appreciate the exercise while walking and the
fun while on wheels. I do have a huge advantage being literate in Chinese
characters, and Mandarin is more useful than English in a lot of areas, which
mitigates some of the issues being surrounded by Cantonese.

I'm not working yet, but I've been going to a lot of Ruby and JS meet-ups, and
it's generally a sub half-hour walk to any of their offices. All in all, I
like it. I just have to avoid the Tenderloin when coming back from the
Adobe/Zynga area.

So far the only difficulties I've had have been general country adjustment
things (having spent nearly my whole adult life abroad), not SF things. To be
honest, I'm amazed at how friendly and helpful everyone is!

------
jboggan
This is a welcome and timely article since I'm about to pull up stakes in
Georgia and move to SF in late July (cue Otis Redding). I am planning on
couch-surfing with friends for the first few weeks while I find a good sublet
for a few months. Hopefully after that I can get an apartment when I have a
job and know the neighborhoods a little better. Are rents really accelerating
upward so quickly that I'm better off finding an apartment as soon as
possible?

~~~
jevanish
I just looked at rents after posting this article and it looks like things are
going up about $100/mo at least in the areas I had saved on PadMapper.

My advice would be to wait and find a place you'll like and just realize once
you get a full lease (ie- 1 year or more) you'll be there a while because in a
year, rent will definitely be way higher.

------
prodigal_erik
You don't have to support YC's favorite spammers to land a short-term place.
There are some month-to-month apartments in the city (e.g., Landmark, who I'm
using now, basically wants a pulse and a credit card for the rent) and motels
on the peninsula with weekly rates that are about the same as renting a studio
but with utilities, parking, and cleaning included.

~~~
kevinsd
Hi, the short-term option sounds very interesting to me. Will definitely check
out landmark. Meanwhile, do you have any particular motels in mind?

------
lsiebert
Two things:

First, the bart shutting down at midnight doesn't mean there is no public
transit. You can almost always take the bus.

Second: You can move near SF state, either in the city or in Daly City, and
have an ok roommate/rent situation with managable transit options. Especially
if you are willing to bike a bit.

------
wyclif
Seriously, can someone in the know please explain "bro central" to me? I know
what a "brogrammer" is (I think), but maybe I missed the "bro" meme.

~~~
notatoad
Think brogrammer minus the programmer. Frat boys and whatnot. (named because
the tend to call everybody 'bro')

------
base698
You can also use Amtrak to ship your stuff to the Oakland station. It's by far
the most cost effect way to move long distances.

[http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/ContentServer?c=Page&pagen...](http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/ContentServer?c=Page&pagename=am%2FLayout&cid=1241267371736)

~~~
encoderer
To ship boxes, yes.

But honestly if you're an engineer taking a job at a bay area tech company,
you will be getting a relo package. If you move here on your own dime you're
doing it wrong.

~~~
base698
I sold everything at the other end and used the relo to buy new stuff.

If you move your old worn out stuff you're doing it wrong. :)

~~~
lazerwalker
While this is a great strategy (I did just that when I moved cross-country a
few months ago), it's worth recognizing that it's predicated on owning
suitably cheap furniture. As you move beyond the stage in your life where your
apartment is outfitted solely by Ikea, this gets less and less viable.

------
jarek
"Move mid-month so that you can look for places starting the first of the next
month; I moved out on March 14th and moved into an apartment then starting
April 1st."

I would have guessed all the really good apartments would be spoken for by
March 5th. Odd.

------
HaloZero
<http://www.creditkarma.com/> is a better service for credit reports than
freecredit.com

~~~
Caerus
While great, creditkarma.com only provides your score.

If you're looking for a complete credit report, there is no reason to not use
<https://www.annualcreditreport.com/>. It is the official site set up by the
three reporting agencies, as mandated by the Fair and Accurate Credit
Transactions Act.

------
mahyarm
Ack. I want to move from the south bay to SF for young single person reasons,
but now this is making me reconsider.

~~~
ppz
No reason to stress if you're already settled in the Bay Area -- you've got a
natural launching pad for the apartment search, which makes it so much easier.
Rely heavily on contacts in the city to get the inside track on an apartment,
and it shouldn't be too tough.

------
jjNford
Thanks, this will help greatly, I leave for SF in 2 days!

------
jsprinkles
I pay $2,000/mo for three very spacious bedrooms in Dublin, and I'm to work in
SoMa in about an hour on BART _(with an empty inbox!)_. Not to mention Dublin
is an absolutely wonderful place to live for suburban types, like married
couples. It's really depressing that discussions like this revolve around the
city only.

There is an _entire world_ of commuter residences all around San Francisco,
and people figured out how to commute to San Francisco long before the tech
boom (and most people wanting to live in the city) existed. Dublin/Pleasanton
is the extreme, but there's also Castro Valley on my same line, a whole
shitload of Oakland like Lake Merritt, and if you take the Pittsburg/Bay Point
a whole bunch up there, too. Take off the San Francisco blinders and take
advantage of the commute options that were built long before this industry.

It feels like people moving to San Francisco now treat it like New York City,
where living in New Jersey and commuting in tends to suck. So most people
focus on the boroughs, and landlords take advantage of them. San Francisco's
out-of-town situation is _far_ better, and I don't regret choosing a place an
hour out of town at all.

~~~
joejohnson
I want to work in SoMa and not spend 10 hours a week commuting. I can empty my
inbox at work, where I'm paid to do it.

~~~
jsprinkles
So you'd rather spend 10 hours a week commuting inside SF?

~~~
joejohnson
No, I'd rather live close to work. Currently I have a 5-10 minute walking
commute.

------
georgieporgie
SF just isn't worth it anymore. The fog (I know there are fog-free areas, but
much of SF is foggy-to-super-foggy), the filth, the homeless, and the insane
landlords and rents are out of hand. Also, I'm of the opinion that SF culture
peaked in the 90s.

~~~
SkyMarshal
> Also, I'm of the opinion that SF culture peaked in the 90s.

Could you elaborate on that? I'm very new to the Bay Area, still absorbing it
all.

~~~
georgieporgie
SF in the 90s was an awesome place for punk and industrial music, cyberpunk
visions of the future, ratbikes, raves, and a lot more arty types mixing with
the nerds. As things cleaned up and gentrified, a lot of what I consider to be
the cool culture was replaced by trustifarians and graphic designers who like
to cultivate the image of a bicycle messenger or blue-collar worker.

SF still has a lot to offer, but it just feels very fake and flooded with
money to me. When everyone in the room is making six figures, it's hard to
take the person in the thrift-shop shirt and tattoos seriously.

------
nooooooo
As a non-US person moving to SF later this year, I don't have a US credit
rating yet. How do I go about looking for places?

~~~
encoderer
1) No credit is way better than bad credit.

2) Get a secured credit card so you at least have a file when they run your
credit check. I'm sure you can find guides on how best to do this as a foreign
citizen. If you don't have family or close friends here you could be out of
luck. But if you do, you could easily have the card shipped to them and allow
them to use it for things occasionally to help you get a credit rating.

US Credit ratings (FICO scores) are heavily weighted on revolving (credit
card) accounts, not so much installment accounts, so don't worry about those.

Doing these things will help you immeasurably. Pulling credit is as much about
identity verification as it is credit risk.

If you can't, remember: There are a TON of people with bad credit everywhere.
They're not homeless. You will just have to be tenacious about it.

~~~
WildUtah
>>No credit is way better than bad credit.<<

When you are trying to rent an apartment, yes. If you are trying to buy a cell
phone or get a Mastercard or buy a car or a house, it's just the opposite:
there's nothing worse than no credit.

~~~
encoderer
Respectfully, I disagree.

If you have no credit, you can get a secured credit card and have a 650-700
fico in a few months. You'll have a thin file so don't expect a mortgage or
anything, but in a year or two even that will be no problem.

Bad credit? You can do a lot to clean it up before the 7 years are up, but ive
seen this in my own family and it's really a waiting game for bad entries to
age off your report.

And anecdotally, which would you prefer to lend to: somebody with no track
record, knowing the average American has a 650+ credit score, or somebody who
has bad credit and a proven history of not repaying obligations.

It is subjective though, and ymmv.

~~~
WildUtah
I have no credit report, in spite of living 35 years in the USA. My friends
with bad credit and bankruptcies can buy cell phones, rent expensive things,
get apartments, get mortgages, and deal with other life activities much more
easily than I can.

So there's your answer: you'd rather lend money to the known deadbeat than
someone with no credit history.

~~~
encoderer
I think you should consider that probably the largest reason you have so much
trouble is that they cannot use your credit profile to verify your identity.

You can fix that very easily. You don't have to have a line of credit to get
into their database. All you have to do is apply for one. That inquiry will be
reported, you will have a credit file, and from then-on to whomever is pulling
your credit it won't look as though you just made-up a 9 digit number in place
of a real social security number.

The best way to do this will be to apply for credit some place in-person, like
a bank.

So I'll reiterate: Having no credit is a much better position than having bad
credit.

Having no identity? _That_ is a problem I'm sure.

