Can you be denied a rental property if you have not lived with your roommates in the past?

Question

I recently applied for a house with a property management company and they called me the same day and told me that the application wasn't going to be reviewed or accepted because of my rental history. They said that they require all roommates applying to have lived with each other for the past two years. In other words, we all need to have the same rental history. I have lived with one of them for the past four years and there is only one person who is new. Can our application be denied completely without it even being reviewed for that reason?

Answer 1

Yes. The landlord has likely had their fill of roommates gone bad issues in the past.

Answer 2

Half of all the questions in this category are from roommates who are not receiving the rent from the others.  Landlords are tired of this nonsense.  Ask if you can pay 3 or 6 months in advance.  /

Answer 3

Sure. As long as their practices are not discriminatory, they can set the ground rules.

Answer 4

Unless there is a potential hidden reason like race, the company can simply toss your application into the garbage and never reply to it, or they can leave it on a shelf until the apartment is rented. Most companies who would apply this rule would like to avoid students as tenants but may not be able to do that legally. But it does also work to avoid L*****n and g*y couples newly formed.

But then there are landlords who just do not like the results they have had with newly formed alliances.

Mostly they will get away with this, but will hide the fact that they are doing it fairly well.  It is unusual for them to give this publicly as the reason.

Answer 5

Sure, it is their property.

Roomies work out very rarely, they are just protecting their assets.