So we're being evicted AGAIN!

[OnandOnItGoes]

3rd rented property in 7 years. Been here for 4 years. Had to leave the last two properties as landlord selling, now we're in the same situation again.

Rent always paid on time and properties always very well looked after so it's not that we're bad tenants, just the never ending game we're stuck in.

We left within the notice period of last 2 properties but can't with this one as rents are £500+ for similar properties and much smaller worse properties with no parking/horrible areas are £200-300 a month more and we simply can't afford it or find one which we are successful for as they seem to only want 'professionals' in high paying jobs.

Council have been no help and have said as both DH and I work, we need to find another rented property. I can only work part time in a low paying admin job due to caring responsibilities as need to be on hand for disabled DC for school drop/pick up and after school as no after school care (teens). We have no family support.

Also worried about being put in temp accommodation as around here it seems to be adapted office blocks with lots of anti social issues. Also as we work I understand we'll have to pay a lot for it!

Section 21 expires on 15th May and I'm aware Landlord will start court process for possession as he's very keen to get us out and get it sold. I assume he'll use the accelerated procedure as he's a professional landlord with lots of properties and is selling most of them I believe.

Does anyone know how long we may have before bailiffs? We're in the South East. I've already looked into storage facilities so we can empty the house but we have no family to stay with so not sure where we'll go from there.

Of course we will continue looking for a property and continue paying rent but any advice on timeline will be helpful if anyone has been through the process recently?

The stress is unbearable and much worse this time due to the current rental market!

If they sell to a FTB renter then that’s one less renter.

This process takes a while as selling/buying is so slow in the U.K.

But the rental market will slow. Which further encourages more landlords to sell up.

If the end product is the same number of houses in the hands of more people, then finally we are making progress.

@ThankmelaterOkay your ideology is aspirational but sadly mortgages are super hard to get I want to sell to my renters I think two will the other two not a chance due to poor credit etc

So someone should rent out their property and be out of pocket doing so? That’s why lots of landlords are selling, the rent may just pay the mortgage but what about the never ending safety certificates, repairs and maintenance…. You’re probably the type of tenant who thinks everyone owes you big time!

Yes there will always be a need for some level of short term rental and long term rental market in the U.K.

Sure, those tenants may never be able to get a mortgage. Some people may want to rent, at least in the short term, for a variety of reasons.

But the situation we’ve found ourselves as a country is ridiculous. Many young people are just unnecessarily competing with these other aforementioned groups, which inflates rental prices.

Ultimately just because something is difficult to achieve, should we abandon it? Our country would be a much better one if we shared the U.K. property portfolio around people working/living/paying tax in in the U.K., equally.

No foreign investors, bring back social housing, heavily penalise empty properties to generate the funding for the former, speed up probate, speed up/revolutionise the buying/selling of property.

The elephant in the room being that U.K. property would no longer be a cash cow for a handful of people.

Huge sympathy OP but it's going to have to be a smaller flat and/or a cheaper area isn't it? A house at £500pcm under the market rate was unlikely to last forever.

It's absolutely ridiculous that rent is that high, but realistically cutting your cloth if you possibly can is surely going to be less stressful than waiting to get evicted. I'm in the south east and 3 bed houses are expensive, but there are quite a few 2 bed flats, and some 2 bed houses, for under £1000 still if you avoid the most expensive school catchment areas. You might be able to just move towns rather than moving a long way north.

OP please don't be scared by this sort of thing. If you're going to go down the route of council's homelessness procedure you don't need a reference for a new rental even if it ends up being a private rental. They find you somewhere to rent with a LL who will accept you, whether that's a housing association or a private LL. They can help people who have no deposit, no references, no guarantor etc.

I agree with others that OP may never leave this system without decent references etc, but most people going down this route are doing so because of the potential of eventually securing a housing association property and the permanent tenancy that comes with it, however long it takes. They're not people looking to go from that into private rental. For those who really need the security of a permanent tenancy, going down the council homelessness route is an investment in their future.

I'm so sorry OP. What a crap thing to happen again. As well as the massive hassle and upheaval (especially with a child) it's bloody expensive to move.

This is why minimalist is best OP. Last time I moved I hired a transit van for £75 for the day, 3 trips later my DP and I had moved the entire contents of our home with no additional charge, beyond the diesel.

I was just about to post this.
As devastating as it is, if you can’t afford the current rent prices in your area something needs to change: either location / size of the property or level of earnings.

Regardless of which one you choose, there is nothing to gain by waiting 2-3 months, and by doing so you ruin your chances of a good reference.
Personally I would think long term.
Could you handle night work shifts (assuming your DC are at school during the day)?
Otherwise I’ll look into moving somewhere where rents are affordable (comfortably, you won’t want to find yourself priced out again).
Good luck!

@ThankmelaterOkay your post is spot on. It does no one any favours to have such high house prices. The ideal scenario is that they come down gradually so as to not put people in negative equity. There needs to be wholesale reform of the housing market in the UK, we need a mixed economy of ownership, social and private LLs but we can't sustain these prices.

Can u buy a caravan to live in whilst u look. Not ideal I know but would put a roof over your heads. It’s awful how few rentals about, government not helping landlords to stay renting at all. Just sold a very nice warm 5 berth caravan for £4,000 is cheaper ones about too. You would have to move it from site to site I guess unless u could come to agreement with some one. I lived in one for two years, wasn’t pleasant at times but we managed.

I don't know where people are getting than my landlord had been 'kind' and let the property at below market value! It was let at market rate and with increases each year. It's just that market rents have increased significantly over the last two years in my area due to the exodus from London. My LA has deals with London councils to place people here.

Two beds are now £1400-1500.

An ex council flat in a council block is now £1300!

It's a bloody nightmare.

Fuck me! We should of course live in a caravan with two disabled children so my landlord can sell to make £150k profit for basically doing nothing.

We should know our place of course.

Have you registered for all local social housing? As in HAs too not just council

Try to avoid a court eviction order at all costs. That history would make you highly unattractive to future LL's .You will need to consider moving to an Air Bnb that will accommodate all of you ( possessions in storage). consider a caravan.

afaik the council is only obliged to provide emergency accommodation for a mother with children. It will most likely be Bed and Breakfast single room and won't accommodate your husband.

But your landlord didn’t do nothing. They invested in a property and let it out, presumably in line with regulations. There is work involved in all of that.

You deserve much better from the housing market as a whole, but your landlord is entitled to make financial decisions in their own interest as well.

When the local council refused to help you with housing when told of an eviction notice, did you inform them that you have two disabled children ?

When you informed them of an eviction notice , not a refusal to help because of one .

Do you have a guarantor?

What area?

I have a lot of sympathy for the OP but the landlord has given her family a much reduced rent for four years and now unfortunately has to sell - they might be in a terrible position as well, who knows. Don't go with this plan OP for all concerned....

I'm sure he's not selling for fun.

That PP only suggested a caravan as a stop gap. You're finding issues with every suggestion that avoids a CCJ when ultimately that'll leave you homeless anyway.

If an equivalent house would cost you £500pcm then of course you're currently paying under market rate, and that wasn't going to last forever.

Blaming people moving out from London and your landlord isn't going to achieve anything at all. Expand your search. If there's really nothing under £1300pcm then you're somewhere extremely expensive, even by south east standards, and/or you need to realign your expectations and consider somewhere smaller. Temporary accommodation provided by the council is likely to be a hell of a lot worse.

Sadly there isn't enough social housing for people in your situation. It's about time social housing moved people in larger family homes to smaller homes for older/single people. I know it's a problem where people sit in a cheap rented social home and children have moved out, blocking families from gaining the benefit they had. On the other hand people in private rentals can be booted out quite quickly.

@caringcarer well isn't that grand your son managed to do that but it had no relevance to OP's situation. You do realise not everyone can afford to get a mortgage right? It's not as simple as 'my son took a pay cut and changed his job now he is so much better off because he moved to a cheaper area and bought a house'. OP said she can't just
Leave the area.

Don’t get me wrong, I'm certainly not "pro-LL" and I can absolutely understand why so many people view them as the enemy - because that's exactly what they are to a lot of people. Whilst it's wrong to blame the whole shambles of a housing system on LLs, it's also disingenuous to pretend they play no part - a great many of them without a thought or care for anyone else. But all LLs are not created equal and it's a subject with some nuance in certain cases.

For example, I have a relative who inherited a house. She's had a rocky life and for various reasons she hasn't built up any savings or a pension. She owns a small home of her own which she lives in but would not be able to keep afloat on state pension alone. She doesn’t have the luxury of time to make investments due to age. Her health is unlikely to allow her to continue working for very much longer. So she rents out the inherited house to provide a retirement income in the near future and to allow her to (hopefully) pass some assets onto her children. Obviously even “accidental LLs” are still impacting the housing market, but in the absence of alternative sources of retirement income (that haven’t taken decades of planning and surplus income to create) and wanting to help their children in the current economic climate, some people are backed into a corner and obviously have to prioritise themselves and their families ultimately. There’s a difference between making ethically shaky financial decisions in order to provide a very standard quality of life for yourself/your kids where you’re not reliant upon the council for housing, and doing it to fund a nice comfortable middle class lifestyle when you already have what you need.

On the other hand plenty of people choose to go down the BTL route even with other options available to them, albeit perhaps less lucrative ones. We had the opportunity last year to buy a rental property in an area with few rental properties, lots of demand and high yields. But it’s my hometown and I know only too well how many local families are priced out of the housing market (we were for years) and I won’t contribute to that problem. We invested our money differently and whilst it’s unlikely to pay off in the same way, I can sleep at night.

Then you have the “career LLs” who buy up 10s, 100s or 1000s of properties and decimate the local market to line their pockets. Absolutely despicable people.

Unfortunately we are at the point where the private rental market is essential to the dysfunctional housing system we have in place. Changing that fact will mean changing the entire system. It can (and should) be done, but not without solving all facets of the problem. However that’s not a defence of (most) LLs. It doesn’t mean they aren’t the problem; it just means there are other problems in addition to them.

It's his property, he has a right to sell it. With renting there is always the risk the landlord may sell, it's just the way it is, it's their property after all. You may need to move out the area if you are priced out and the council won't help.