renting flat to 17 year old couple

[skiingcat]

This is probably not in the right place but this is my first ever post..
My dh has a flat which he rents and we were showing people round yesterday and this couple were really keen however they are both only 17. They both work and have been to the council and got paperwork to confirm they can afford it. My husband agreed they could have it subject to the solicitor doing references. He agreed before I could jump in and say we would discuss it as we still had others to see. She seemed lovely but I didn't like the look of him but I am probably quite judgemental. I did some sock media searching when we got home and it seems like he has cheated on her in the past and she is barred from the pub he works in cause she doesn't get on with his family. Maybe I'm just worrying but I do not want trouble as getting tenants out seems like a nightmare and the law is more on their side than the landlords. Also he asked what our jobs were and when he said he was like oh you must have a fair amount of money coming in...

And failures in the private housing market are the reason local councils and bodies like the Peabody Trust took it on themselves to build decent housing in the first place.

Which makes it all the more ironic that many of those council houses are now owned and let out by private landlords.

^A lot of what is paid out in LHA goes to councils or not for profit housing associations.^

Yes, just over half, according to 2012 figures. Since those were published, there has been a rise in LHA recipients in private sector rentals, due to increasing rents and depression on wages. And even going on the 2012 figures, the then 1,655,000 private sector tenants who claimed LHA were collectively handing over more than £9 billion of LHA money to their landlords ie the state is funding personal property empires/investments/pensions/whatever you want to call it, to the tune of nine billion pounds a year, every year.

No, the state is paying for people to have housing when they can't afford to do it for themselves.

Where the money goes after it has been used by the person who claims it is irrelevant, as long as it's getting the claimant the service it is intended for.

I think if nine billion pounds a year of public money is being handed over to private landlords, then what happens to it is extremely relevant. There is lots of talk about so-called 'welfare dependency' going on at the moment. Precious little of that seems to centre on the landlords who are dependent on welfare money.

many people make no money from their property rentals, but use them as an investment

I'm not going on an anti-landlord mission (despite the temptation, with the way mine's behaving) although all of Rommel's and Parsing's points are completely valid. But the statement above really makes me itch! Landlords are always saying they "make no money" when what they mean is they draw no income from their properties. They have a cost-free investment, which is very likely to outperform other investments that aren't cost-free. It's a cushy ride. It's dishonest to say they don't make money!

I think rommell has some very good points personally
House prices are completely over inflated which has in turn pushed up rental costs and I also think this help to buy scheme is creating more problems. They are advertising New homes by me with price tags up to 600k on help to buy. Surely if you can afford an executive house up to that price on a naice estate, you do not need help to buy!

My landlord makes money out of us as he inherited the house and we end up rodding the sewer and other random crap because it would never get done

There's definitely a very serious public concern with money going to private landlords.

If you consider WHY so much money is going to them, it is because private landlords expect to make hundreds of thousands of pounds in profit (capital gains), on an investment that is funded for them by the state. That's not a problem in itself, plenty of private companies make big profits from providing services, but when the private sector is actually creating the demand, then questions should be asked.

Example: SomeCompany builds a hospital and charges the government £1 m per year to run it. Fine: we need hospitals, people get sick and die, not problematic.

Different example: Joe Bloggs buys a flat for £150k and charges the government £12,000 per year to rent it out to a social housing tenant. The social tenant hopes in future to buy his own flat, but can't currently do so due to personal circumstances.

Hundreds of thousands of other Joe Bloggses also do BTL, meaning that the market value of the flat rises to £250,000. Now to social housing tenant can NEVER afford to buy his own flat, so the private sector landlords are actually increasing the demand for their own services. This is equivalent to the PFI hospital company giving people cancer so it can create demand for more hospitals.

There were 1.8 million households renting in the private sector in 2001 in England. By 2011 that had almost doubled to 3.4 million, while the number of households living in a mortgaged home had actually SHRUNK, from 8.0 million to 7.2 million.

Basically what happened was every single new home in Britain that was built went to buy-to-let. (Ok, there was turnover, so some buy-to-lets are old homes, and some mortgagees are new home owners, but the increase in households 2001 to 2011 was exactly equal to the increase in number of BTLs.)

There's no doubt that BTL is bad for society. That spiralling housing benefit bill, now £25 billion and counting has spiralled, not because of spongers on Benefit Street, but because of a different kind of sponger - middle-class property speculators. And don't be deluded that they aren't spongers, the fact is that they buy housing at such ludicrous valuations that they are collectively 'too big to fail', and therefore subject to endless government bail-outs in the form of negative real interest rates now for five years and counting, 'Help To Bubble', billions in benefit payments without which their 'portfolios' would be worthless, and so on and on. The only difference is they aren't subject to weekly interviews and TV exposés about their lifestyles.

the increase in households 2001 to 2011 was exactly equal to the increase in number of BTLs

!!!!!

I think if nine billion pounds a year of public money is being handed over to private landlords

But it's not being handed over to private landlords, it's being handed over to claimants that can't afford to pay for their own housing.

LHA/HB is a good thing! It allows people to have a home.

I do understand the problems associated with large numbers of BTL landlords, and I agree that house prices are crazy.

But all of the points made by you Rommell, assume that every landlord is BTL. Or that they take public money.

If you are going to generalise and then complain about such a large group of people it would be polite to acknowledge that many people who fit the definition of 'landlord' are neither getting someone else to pay their mortgage because they don't have one, or taking money from benefit claimants.

When interviewing tenants, I'd advise you to trust your gut instincts

Not sure why people think under 18s can't get any benefits, I rented a private flat age 16-18, only moved out because I was offered a council flat in a better area. It was paid for by housing benefit and I received income support aswell until I was 18 when I switched to JSA.

This was in 2008 so not that long ago, have the rules changed?

I was homeless for the first half of 17 then had a housing association flat in the 2nd.

Spent about 2 years there and didn't cause a peep of trouble.

In fact had my slightly elderly neighbour knock my door to say how thankfull she was a nice quiet young person had moved in as the 30s prof couple before me had been an absolute nightmare with noise and leaving rubbish in the common areas!

Be on your guard but don't just jump to no because of their age.

If I hadn't been given a chance then I don't want to think how I could've ended up

"This was in 2008 so not that long ago, have the rules changed?"

Yes they have and they are about to change again in April.

Excellent post, AgaPanthers. BTL, encouraged by the sell-off of council houses and the introduction of ASTs, has changed the landscape of housing in the UK, and not in a good way.

Absolutely no way on God's earth would I set myself up for the headache this is bound to become in one way or another

I think yabu on judging on appearances, my dh and I tented from the age of
17 and were very good tenants with good jobs and eventually got married.
But i agree with other posters in trusting your instinct, the comment on your dh's job/wage sounds very immature to me.

Under 18s in the eyes of the law are children, they haven't the legal capacity to enter a contract, so any contract is unenforceable.They also are not allowed credit

If you consider WHY so much money is going to them, it is because private landlords expect to make hundreds of thousands of pounds in profit (capital gains), on an investment that is funded for them by the state.

do tell how I can do this, We'd all like to know. I couldn't find the form that I should have filled in to get a free house which I could then rent out - where is it?

because I couldn't find this form, I had to work to buy the house, which then rents at market rent. If I put it on at too much rent no-one will move in. (I'm not in London, people have brains here in this rather pleasant part of the country).

wow,what a lot of bollocks is talked by the landlord-haters. I do wonder how these people make their money. And of course they must have built their own house out of mud and straw, because they will also find paying a mortgage unethical.

Basically what happened was every single new home in Britain that was built went to buy-to-let.

evidence please. That means NOBODY took out a mortgage on a new house.

Repeating Aga's post for special, who has failed to read:

"Basically what happened was every single new home in Britain that was built went to buy-to-let. (Ok, there was turnover, so some buy-to-lets are old homes, and some mortgagees are new home owners, but the increase in households 2001 to 2011 was exactly equal to the increase in number of BTLs.)"

Special, I did find the evidence for this yesterday, after reading Aga's post. I found Excel spreadsheets which I couldn't be arsed to interpret for a post here, but she is correct. Obviously there was churn - people did take out new residential mortgages and people dropped out of the mortgage market. But the two figures matched, yes :(

Also nice try by WooWoo.

When taxpayers are spending billions of pounds buying a public service, we have every right to look at whether that service could be bought more cheaply or be better quality.

It doesn't matter whether service provider is paid directly, paid via the service user or whether the service is provided by a private company on govt contract.

Oh, and everything Aga said at 19:14 Mon.

Yes if you look at the stats, from 2001 to 2011 the number of people living mortgage-free increased, so people who had bought houses prior to the BTL boom paid them off, but the number of owner-occupiers with mortgages shrunk by around 10% (700,000). In other words, buy-to-let broke the natural rhythm of the housing market - normally as you get older you pay off your mortgage, and when you are younger you buy your first house with a mortgage.

Instead of this happening, the older generation did pay off their mortgages, but the young generation were forced into serfdom by buy-to-let.

The number of buy-to-let mortgages outstanding was:

1997: 28,700 (i.e. basically nothing)
2006: 850,000
2013: 1.48 million

The war criminal Blair created the BTL market, and this current shower of a government has supported it.