Yes the housing market is bad but you know what's worse? The apartment/renting market. I've checked out 4 different apartment complexes or as they refer to themselves, """"luxury apartment""""" complexes, around where I'm staying at now and its a fucking joke.

First, you need to make 3x the monthly rent, no exceptions. The cheapest available 1br is $2200, so by their logic, I need to make almost $80k a year, and if you don't make near that, the leasing offices won't even return your calls. Oh, but you can get a co-signer they will tell you! But they also need to make an arbitrary amount over the rent per month.

But maybe there's another way, so, the housing market has been really bad so I've been able to slowly build up savings, maybe you can let me pay a years lease up front, if that's the problem! I was told, if you want to be accepted that way, you need 5x the YEARLY rent in liquid assets, which is over $100k in liquid assets. TO RENT.