Ive got a 2 bed ground floor inner london flat in great condition, and now thinking about rentuing it out to housing benefit tenants. I work in social services and have a sound knowlerge of private tenancies etc. what Im asking here is; 1.have you ever rented to housing benefit tenancies 2.and how did you go about it? 3. What are the pitfalls that you had not anticipated? Thanks, Lynz
I have heard that if the rent is paid directly to the landlord, but it then turns out to be a fraudulent claim, the DSS will reclaim the money from the landlord and expect the landlord to get the money owed from the bogus claimant. If this is true it would certainly put me off renting to DSS.
yeah I read this in the Fair rents board website. I need to loOK into this more as it seems damn prohibitive. and to think the government is crying out for landlords in london, or so they tell me.
If there is a good way of screening who is coming to live there it can be a very good idea. The house next door to me is privately owned and he's had nothing but short term private lets for the last 5 years after a very stress free 6 year let to a single mum on benefits.
Just a bit of a lottery it seems, but if you get the right tenant and it can be a real good idea.
*It is not necessary to understand things in order to argue about them. -- Pierre De Beaumarchais
Plus there's no guarantee that the rent figure the council comes up with will be the same as what you want. I suspect the people who decide the fair rent have no idea about market conditions to be honest.
First thing you need to do is check that your lender (I presume you are BTLetting) will accept DSS as most wont as a condition of the mortage.
Check that your buidling/contents insurance will allow you to rent to DSS as again, most will decline to quote if you tell them beforehand or refuse to pay out if you didnt tell them....and its very easy for them to check!
DSS (Housing Benefit) On the forms it will say whether the rent is to be paid to the tenant or landlord directly, as the tenant (claimant) needs to fill in this form you will never know which box they tick!...and even if you did the form with them, as the claimant they are legally entitled to request that the money is sent to them in their name and the local authority has no obligation to inform you of this change as the tenancy is with the claimant and you, NOT with you and the local authority.
I'm not saying all DSS tenants are bad, but a few points to note are - A lot of private DSS tenants end up this way because they have been evicted from council housing. If they recieve the rent instead of you (and presuming the first cheque will be for 2 or 3 months rent) this is like a small lottery win to someone who survives on less than £60 a week....the temptation can be too much! You will most likely be unable to run a thorough credit check on the person (unlike workers) as they will have none or very little to check.
The way Manchester council work out rent is quite complicated, it goes on the size of property, need for that person (if its a single person they dont need 2 bedrooms so the council wont pay for the second bedroom). Currently up here you would expect to recieve about £450 - £550 (1 bed flat) from DSS whereas privately you would achieve £650 - £675 for the same flat..so its not worth doing unless you buy grot holes (usually ex-council stock) that nobody else is prepared to live in....not nice I know, but there are landlords making a tidy profit from this. Not a road I wish to go down, but somebody's going to do it.
Anyway, heres the last hurdle the council will throw in your way -
Lets say somebody on DSS wants to rent your flat. The council will only come and value it for rental ONCE the claimant has filled in their housing benefit form which they cant do until you give them a tenancy agreement....so this in effect means that you would be renting to that person without knowing how much rent you would recieve from the council (!).....
So what if the council came up £50 - £100 short each month..well, supposedly, the tenant will have to make up the difference (out of what I have no idea).
If you then said to that person sorry mate I need the full rent...it would take you 2,3 or 4 months to evict them as you have already given them a 6 month tenancy.
I suppose it gets easier once you start buying up loads of them and you know precisely how much the council will award...but the first time seems very hard and unfair to everybody concernd.
my partner rented his house out to a dss tenant. at the end of his lease the guy wanted to leave and we wanted the house back to decorate it but because of the way the council works he had to be made homeless before the council would find him another place. thus it took 6 months, court dates, baliffs and several hundred pounds before we both got what we wanted! it was a nightmare and they left the house in an absolute state - which we have also had the bear the cost of
A prospective tenant can get a "pre tenancy determination" form from the council office. They fill in a bit and the landlord fills in a bit - details about the size of the house, rent asked etc. You then give it back to the council and they should get back to you within about a week (often 2 or 3 days in this area but others may well be different) to say how much housing benefit they will pay (assuming the tenant is entitled to full hb as they are on benefits or have a very low income) - so that can be done before the person has signed up to the house or actually applied for housing benefit.
Originally posted by Jim G: I have heard that if the rent is paid directly to the landlord, but it then turns out to be a fraudulent claim, the DSS will reclaim the money from the landlord and expect the landlord to get the money owed from the bogus claimant. If this is true it would certainly put me off renting to DSS.
The DSS can ask for the money back from you but they don't have a right to, they are just trying it on. Strictly speaking they should be chasing up the tenant although they know that it is most likely a waste of time.
Lynzpower - Try this website for your question Landlord Zone as they deal with it day in day out. From what I have read on there previously I would not rent to a DSS Tenant at all - in the long run it seems cheaper to leave the place empty.
I have been told by a reputable source that you can rent your property to the council for them to use it as a kind of safe house for problem cases and they pay something like £60 per day for 1 bed flats in London to the 'Landlord' I have a flat that has been sublet by my tenant to what looks like yardie drug dealers. They have trashed the place!! The person that rented it from me is making pretty much a 100% profit Anyone heard of this situation before??
"The greatest trick the Devil played, was convincing us all that he did not exist"
you could get your flat back quicker than you thought immy. I heard these Yardies go around shooting one another for a hobby! Tough on Crime and the Causes of Crime! Yeah! Right!
I arranged a visit very recently the smell of drugs in there was terrible the social worker turned up as i was leaving. I suppose the bleeding heart liberals think this is how we should treat the underbelly of society. Give them free flats off me the taxpayer help them with social workers get back into society but ultimately pay for them to sit at home smoking themselves into oblivian at my exspence These people are better off than i am and ia work for a living
"The greatest trick the Devil played, was convincing us all that he did not exist"
Don't do it! After 20 years of renting to DSS via the council, I got out of it all last year, the rooms were nearly always trashed when they left, if it wasn't nailed down they would pinch it, (sometimes even nailed down!) friends always staying over or moving in, rent not paid because they had become ineligible and not told me, the list is endless!
Originally posted by slater14: DSS (Housing Benefit) On the forms it will say whether the rent is to be paid to the tenant or landlord directly, as the tenant (claimant) needs to fill in this form you will never know which box they tick!...and even if you did the form with them, as the claimant they are legally entitled to request that the money is sent to them in their name and the local authority has no obligation to inform you of this change as the tenancy is with the claimant and you, NOT with you and the local authority.
I had a tenant on HB once; fortunately she was a decent sort and ticked "pay directly to landlord". I find it absolutely incredible that private (or even council!) DSS tenants are allowed to have the HB paid to them rather than to the landlord directly; it's just asking to be ripped off and creating totally unnecessary work for the courts in terms of debt recovery. I do hope whichever bleeding heart social worker came up with this rule got soundly ripped off by a DSS tenant at some point!
LOL....and heres the biggest kick in the conkers (!) that ruling ONLY applies to private landlords, if you're in council owned property you CANNOT request the money is sent to you directly.
Apparently, it has something to do with blurring the lines over who actually holds the tenancy, the council or the tenant. It could be argued that the council were the ultimate tenants and as such were liable for any debts/damage etc to the property during the term....or thats what they say!
Guppy,
...and if that were to happen there would be a lot of homeless people the day after!
Quite possibly slater14. Many people on HB particulary elderly people are happy to have it paid direct to the land lord as then they don't have to worry about it.
