Renters - what would you do if your landlord is selling up but there's nowhere you can afford to move to?

[Yankydoodledandy]

So my friend has rang me in tears. She lives with her DS who is on an apprentership. She rents and is on PIP and benefits due to ill health.

Her landlord is selling up and she has to move in 6 weeks. All the council houses she can bid for she says are in really bad areas and private rent is crazy.

I just dont know how to advise her.

Anyone got any advice I can forward on please?

@THisbackwithavengeance no it is invariably capitalist landlords who are the problem. Landlords on the whole are utter moronic scum. Never ever met a decent one. Vile vile vile humans.
I have 4 weeks to be out of my home. Despite just being diagnosed with cancer. I can't afford anywhere else and am not eligible for social housing.
My bastard landlords are multimillionaires and have over 60 properties in the uk.

I would advise her to take the best place she can find that the council is offering, you dont say how old DS is, but if he is under 18, she might find that in temporary accomadation they wont have to house him.

Temp accomadation can be miles way from any support she might have, in a grotty B&B with god knows who you might have to share facilities with.

Better to get your foot in the door of any place and then look to swap in a couple of years

@Eggmcmuffin

I know it's what councils and shelter advise but I always think it's pretty bad to wait until eviction as you're essentially stealing in the period after you stop paying rent and still live there waiting dor the eviction. I can see why people do it though.

You still pay rent. Where does anyone say they stop paying it?

So, in her situation, she has to take a council property. Rents have gone crazy recently and each property has multiple bids on it; on benefits with a teen won't be the top choice of many landlords and she won't have the six months up front rent (who would?)

Dire, but not as dire as temp accommodation, so perhaps you could look through the council properties with her, see what her points are and bid on the least worst ones. Being in a secure tenancy is so much better than being at the mercy of the marketplace, she could move somewhere and then the landlord wants it back after six months. I rented for years and found it very unstable, you just don't feel secure.

Not ideal at all, but there isn't some amazing choice- she can't afford private rent so she has to try for the best of the council properties.

I do feel the OP’s friend and don’t really have a good suggestion. But time and time again I read on MN how LLs are greedy and they are buying up homes that lower income people have to compete with, pricing them out etc. but then when LLs want to sell up which can effectively enable a lower income to buy, there is also outcry. What do you want LLs to do?

I’d take the Council house, the likelihood of her getting a private rental is really slim. There is a huge shortage of private rentals. Most referencing companies only accept a percentage of benefits as income. Although they can’t put ‘no benefits’ most will look for employment first.

Staying in the house to trying to wait out a private rental is likely to make it harder to get one going forward, when companies give references they’ll include that they had to take eviction procedures.

She might not want to be in a bad area but isn’t in the position to be picky, rents are only going up and up.

@Dobbysgotthesocks I'm so sorry this is happening to you, DH has cancer and I can only imagine the stress and awfulness of being kicked out of our home on top of everything else.

You've probably already looked into it but just in case: have you double checked with something like Shelter that your landlord has done everything by the book? If they've cut corners on paperwork somewhere that might buy you some extra time. And Shelter or your local Citizens Advice branch will also be able to advise you on social housing - sometimes councils have to be "reminded" about their responsibilities. (Sorry to go off on a tangent on your thread OP - all this applies to your friend too!)

@elbea

I’d take the Council house, the likelihood of her getting a private rental is really slim. There is a huge shortage of private rentals. Most referencing companies only accept a percentage of benefits as income. Although they can’t put ‘no benefits’ most will look for employment first.

Staying in the house to trying to wait out a private rental is likely to make it harder to get one going forward, when companies give references they’ll include that they had to take eviction procedures.

She might not want to be in a bad area but isn’t in the position to be picky, rents are only going up and up.

Although I don’t disagree with you with almost everything you said, I disagree with the benefit vs salary statement.

Yes, there are some horrible agencies and landlords who don’t care and they might not want benefit claimants (for whatever reason) and then that would be true.

however referencing companies are impartial and the decision is always back to the landlord.

The affordability section is almost a tick box exercise. The general rule is your income total should be 3x or 3.5x the monthly rent.
The reality is that usually benefits are never this high. So it’s not a matter of looking for a small portion of benefits and then salary, it’s that to pass affordability, you need to have the 3x-3.5x the rent.

As an example if the rent is £600, your total monthly income should be £1800 - £2,100.

P.S. I would also take the council house since she’s in the privileged (yes, privileged) position of being offered one
I would also take a private rental when offered through the council as the rent is capped at the maximum Local housing allowance rate, meaning you can afford it through benefits alone

I’m not sure why the discussion about how evil or otherwise landlords are.

OP’s friend needs a new property, at short notice. She can’t work.

• she gets PIP
• she gets benefits
• she’s able to bid on council properties (and as the issue is area not availability it sounds like she’s expected to get housing)
• she will then have a secure tenancy at what is usually a fair, below market rate but not tax payer subsidised, rent

That’s a system that supports the vulnerably housed. That’s good.

If the properties available are in “bad” areas, that’s not the fault of the evil landlords.

@321user123 I worked for a large, nationwide referencing company and they only considered a percentage of the benefits for income I.e although you have £10,000 of benefits they only accepted 60% of benefits so it was if the income was £6,000.

Additionally I’ve worked for some major landowners - think owning hundreds/thousands of properties as well as working for surveying firms that manage thousands of properties. Everything I said was true for those. Employed people are always preferred, whether it’s right or not it is the case.

Also with only six weeks to go I'd take something on offer now, e.g. try to get one of the council houses she can bid on.

A friend recently secured a private rental and I was amazed how long and stressful the process was. They could pay several months upfront from savings, and were a "good" straightforward tenant from a landlords perspective.

Viewings (sometimes took a while to get a slot as so many viewers interested in each house), express interest, fill in long forms, sent off bank statements etc...... wait....... get told landlord is thinking about it....... wait.....

Even after they were accepted as a tenant there was an anxious wait to get the tenancy agreement to sign.

Really I wouldn't want to go through that if I knew my tenancy was ending in 6 weeks, and I wasn't a straightforward applicant.

* I know council houses are hardly considered luxurious, but it is a bloody luxury being offered cheap, social housing if you can’t pay proper rent. She’s not in a position to be turning down houses because she doesn’t like the areas*

^This. Your friend sounds so entitled

She would need to take what she can from the council. If she has physical / mobility difficulties and wants an adapted place then these are hard to come by. Many people have to live in less than desirable areas unfortunately. Trying HA's is a good idea too.

[quote Dobbysgotthesocks]@THisbackwithavengeance no it is invariably capitalist landlords who are the problem. Landlords on the whole are utter moronic scum. Never ever met a decent one. Vile vile vile humans.
I have 4 weeks to be out of my home. Despite just being diagnosed with cancer. I can't afford anywhere else and am not eligible for social housing.
My bastard landlords are multimillionaires and have over 60 properties in the uk. [/quote]
It makes me sick these landlord that buy up huge numbers of properties.

@Fretfulmum

I do feel the OP’s friend and don’t really have a good suggestion. But time and time again I read on MN how LLs are greedy and they are buying up homes that lower income people have to compete with, pricing them out etc. but then when LLs want to sell up which can effectively enable a lower income to buy, there is also outcry. What do you want LLs to do?

I'd like them to not bloody buy them in the first place. I'm sick of taxes subsidizing huge rents each month for these greedy people.

You have already said the council has offered her properties but she doesn't like the areas. I am unsure what more enough expect of them?

In my area people who want to rent sometimes get some good information about places coming up on the local facebook pages, worth a try?

My advice would be to bid on the council properties even if she doesn't like the areas. Particularly if she can bid on larger properties as she has her ds living with her. Thinking long term she can then try to bid on smaller properties in nicer areas once her ds has left home, but she'd be in a council property and have that security for her future.

@TheYearOfSmallThings

If she is being offered council properties she should take one - it sounds like she is not in a good position to be at the mercy of the private rental market.

This.

She needs the security if she’s too ill to work.

We're situational landlords. We own a commercial premises for our business which has a flat upstairs that we rent out. We are not vile, vile, vile people. We are good landlords, we charge a very fair rent and the flat is maintained to a high standard. As we're on site during the day we take in parcels for our tenant, help her out with taking heavy items upstairs, attend to any issues quickly, and our tenant's little girl likes to come and "help out" in the business during the school holidays (basically we're free childcare!).

I have to agree that threads like these,
with so many posters advising a tenant to refuse to leave, sit tight, force an eviction - do put me off considering tenants on benefits. If that is what Shelter and the council advise tenants to do then that's really irresponsible. The housing market needs rental properties and it needs good landlords, so why punish landlords by turning the end of a tenancy into a battle? If your landlord has been decent and fair and has served notice as legally required, then why make their life difficult?

I feel sorry for the OP's friend, and I'm sure her landlord does too, but they have their own decisions to make with their own interests in mind. She needs to bid on a council property and leave on good terms.

If she's been offered a council place she should take it... even though she thinks its a bad area there will be lots of people living there that aren't bad...
If she can't work and is receiving all rhe benefits she should be to get extra money then she will have security..
If her DS is an apprentice at some stage he will be leaving home and she needs to be prepared for that....or if he decides to live with her then maybe he'll be earning enough to rent somewhere else..

@Robin843

We're situational landlords. We own a commercial premises for our business which has a flat upstairs that we rent out. We are not vile, vile, vile people. We are good landlords, we charge a very fair rent and the flat is maintained to a high standard. As we're on site during the day we take in parcels for our tenant, help her out with taking heavy items upstairs, attend to any issues quickly, and our tenant's little girl likes to come and "help out" in the business during the school holidays (basically we're free childcare!).

I have to agree that threads like these,
with so many posters advising a tenant to refuse to leave, sit tight, force an eviction - do put me off considering tenants on benefits. If that is what Shelter and the council advise tenants to do then that's really irresponsible. The housing market needs rental properties and it needs good landlords, so why punish landlords by turning the end of a tenancy into a battle? If your landlord has been decent and fair and has served notice as legally required, then why make their life difficult?

I feel sorry for the OP's friend, and I'm sure her landlord does too, but they have their own decisions to make with their own interests in mind. She needs to bid on a council property and leave on good terms.

Don't blame the charities. Citizens Advice do the same. Our duty is to our clients; sadly there are plenty of Local Authority Housing Dept's that will do anything to avoid having to compy with their statutory duty to house someone who is homeless. "You made yourself intentionally homeless by leaving before the posssssion order was served" is a regular reason to say we have no statutory duty to house you. Hence the advice that is given. If councils were more proactive in helping those facing eviction, then the advice could change.

People who just temporarily let out their homes and see it as a quick and easy way to make money are the worst kind of landlords and deserve everything they get.

When I moved in with my husband, if I had sold my flat it would have been in negative equity and I would still have had to pay off the difference. I knew the prices were changing and that within a year or so, the prices rising in the area meant I could break even. I rented until I could sell without losing money. I rented to students and after 18 months I sold it on. It isn’t just about making a quick buck.

I had no idea I was exposing myself to those sorts of losses when I rented out my BTL to a lovely tenant on benefits. I had always thought it was terrible to refuse to rent to benefits claimants, it's good money after all and she had kids and kept everything nice. Well that's me told...

There is not enough social rent properties for all who need them. If private landlords disappeared there would be 10000s homeless. I have 2 properties I rent out to families on UB. They’ve been there for years.