No DSS, No Smokers, No Pets

[JustAnotherPoster00]

Sick of seeing those 3 on every single house I look at, I'm disabled (mainly MH related) and I need to move but can't simply because of those

Ooh please Pinky... Do not laugh
Its past my bedtime! 🙈

*Just

He didn't pay last few months rent, smoked in all the rooms needing serious redecoration, broke several doors, left cocaine in the house which I had the call the police to remove, oh and did this to my shower tray (it's dirt, he never cleaned).
Managed to obtain a CCJ against him but doubt I'll ever see the money back (I'm out of pocket about £1500 including rent arrears and damages).

I think scumbag is being kind. Although I still think the smoking in every room warrants 'scumbag'. Sorry not sorry*

You're right, were all like that on benefits

Lol @ my bold fail

Scared me off now.... would consider a small pet but it's 'working professionals' all the way now with our property

You're right, were all like that on benefits

WTF are you actually going on about? You've literally made that up, I never mentioned benefits. And he actually worked just didn't pay rent. yourself.

MN really is astounding. If a friend IRL told you someone did that to their property as if anyone would go "I can't believe you've called him a scumbag, you benefits basher!!"

Oh and my current tenant is DSS. I accepted her based on her income, so I knew she could afford rent and her excellent references.

did you know that if someone is claiming HBs when they shouldn't be and the council finds out, they reclaim it off the landlord
The rules have changed on that now.

Now they can only reclaim it from the LL if the LL knew of the fraud.

having paid LL thousands and thousands of pounds for 20 years
I can understand that you are frustrated at having to rent a place but you paid the money to have a roof over your head, you weren't doing the LL a favour.

As harsh as it sounds private LLs have every right to choose who does and who doesn't live in THEIR houses.

It may seem unfair but at the end of the day the house belongs to them (and sometimes the mortgage company too).

Whilst LL's do have every right to decide who lives in their property and who doesn't, its also very often idle lettings agents who put this stuff down automatically.

It is well worth seeing if you can speak to the landlord of a property, if you can supply references from previous landlords, offer a bigger deposit or some other attractive clause to the contract such as professional carpet cleaning..

For pets, if you can demonstrate that you are a responsible pet owner, for example show that your pet is insured, is trained (certificates from training classes, report from a behaviourist) or that you have taken some instruction on being a responsible owner (seminars/lectures etc) and again, offer a bigger deposit or cleaning or both...

Then you stand a better chance.

As far as DSS goes - sadly, that can be such a pain if you get a crappy tenant - you have to wait until the tenant is 8 weeks in arrears before you can force the LA to pay their housing benefit directly to you.

If, as happened to me, they then do a bunk before the end of the tenancy, you lose out on whatever is outstanding from the end of the contract AND that first 8 weeks as well - so on a six month contract if the tenant does a bunk a month before the end, you only get three months rent and thats if the HB covers the full rent. If it doesn't and the tenant doesn't pay, you can whistle for it, theres no way of getting it out of them and a small claims court can order them to pay... but they won't!

Mine even had the cheek to ask for the deposit back (not a chance, not with the state she left the property in never mind the outstanding rent of over £1400! )

Ooh er, I just posted a post with some photos and its disappeared

I'll try again.

My last lovely tenants left me this, in what was a nice clean non smoking house.

And some more....

And these....

And the freezer....obviously it had been switched off at some point, all the food inside had rotted and gone mouldy and then it had been switched back on again.....

They were read the riot act about smoking in the house after a recent inspection, so went from smoking in the house, to hanging outside the window and using the wall to stub out the cigs and drop the butts in the garden below....

All the drawer front on the freezer drawers were smashed, bathrooms disgusting, used sanitary towels left behind, stained mattresses, loos needed deep chemical cleaning, bathrooms and showers so mingling it's a wonder anyone cared use them the paint all over the window sills stripped off where they'd be allowed to get sopping wet for months on end, rubbish dumped in the garden, I could go on all day.

Those photos are gross. How could any self respecting person live like that?

And this is why it isn't always the money for old rope that people think it is. And why once, twice, three times bitten you start to be far more choosy about who you will and won't take. Especially if being DSS / HB reliant makes it much harder to evict them or claim on any deposit or bond.

There are some categories or demographics of tenant where you know the wear and tear will be greater and the risks will be higher but often the profit margin looks (on paper) more attractive. But after a while you cease to give a shit about the better profit margin and just don't need to hassle any more, so opt for a bit less money and a much less stressful life. Especially as often the retained deposit doesn't cover the cost of repairing the damage done. The house I've just shown you has had to be completely repainted and recarpet end and the cleaning bill alone was nearly 400 quid.

It's a shame if that means that some potentially great and trouble free tenants get overlooked because they happen to fall into one of your tried and tested 'undesirable' groups for whatever reason, but as private LLs we don't have a sense of duty or responsibility to house people who represent a high risk to us, that should be the job of social housing or specialist LLs who have large contracts with councils and get paid a premium to take that sort of risk.

Tenants

It's the most heart breaking thing to see someone has destroyed your house and the sad fact is there's very little LLs can do about anything without taking court action!

And this is why it isn't always the money for old rope that people think it is.

Yep. I've never made a profit on my rent payments, it only covers mortgage (accidental LL here) but my scumbag (yes I'm saying it again because he is) tenant ensured I lost a lot of money. I'm fortunate enough to have been able to take court action but he hasn't paid his CCJ (balliffs are the next step not something I exactly enjoy doing) but because of the loooong process it'll likely be years before I see so much as a penny back

Sadly tenant is right LLs who've been burnt just have to be extra careful. Someone may appear decent in person and have references that check out and plenty money but in reality it's not always enough. My scumbag ex tenant seemed really lovely and had great references (I think he put some mates down looking back) at first but he was the tenant from hell. My poor neighbour who is disabled didn't sleep for every weekend for nearly a year because of his parties and he also got arrested in a couple of occasions for hitting his girlfriend (which I'm guessing is why there's a fist shaped hole in the door pic above). Trying evict him was hell on Earth, in a nutshell LLs have zero rights, you could live in someone's house rent free for 6-12 months before a LL can legally kick you out (at great expense to themselves). Luckily the scumbag left of his own accord eventually but so much damage had been done.

Like I say my wonderful current tenant is DSS, I don't overlook it, but I won't apologise for being picky now and refusing based on small judgements - Smoking will always be a big no from me from now on.

I am all three and my LL has had continuous rent for over 14yrs without a break, without late payments & with only having to replace the (old when we moved in) cooker once & never having had to repaint (I paid for a repaint myself after 10yrs)

This kind of sums up the issue with renting. Most LL don't want long term 14 year lets. They want to let the property out for a year or two. If someone rents it for donkeys years and you have to fumigate it to get rid of the stink of fags when they leave it's not a massive issue as you'd do work after they left anyway. But if they are there for 6 months it is rather more of an issue. There are other things apart from fags that cause bad lingering smells. Our first house really smelt the previous owners' cooking. It took till it had been completely redocorated and had a new kitchen (five years later) to completely eradicate it.

Debbiedoesdallas
'Vulnerable' tenants usually translates to high maintenance problem tenants. What private LL needs the hassle? That's why the council house right to by scheme should never have been allowed to happen, or at least not without automatic replacement of the social housing stock. We have a collective social responsibility to make sure vulnerable people are housed, not an individual personal responsibility.

This is bang on. The rise and rise of homelessness can be directly attributed to this policy. And affects all people on a lower income.

Completely right Basic

If you know your houses tend to let to people where there is a quick turnover of around two years max at a time (as mine do) then it becomes prohibitively expensive to keep having to repaint or deep clean due to cooking smells or smoking or dogs or whatever. And actually, strongly impregnated cooking smells are a really difficult and intangible thing to try to claim against if the place is left otherwise physically clean and tidy, the same as doggy smells and smoking smells, but they do put off new tenants.

It's easy enough to say no dogs, no smoking, but of course you simply can't say 'no cooking of strong smelling food' because it's totally subjective and impossible to enforce.

I find it's not so much strong smelling foods that are the problem as tenants who open fry or stir fry absolutely everything rather than oven or casserole cooking as it's not a really ideal in our closed in domestic kitchens and everything gets coated in a thick layer of grease, from the ceiling down.

I've also had one lot of tenants repeatedly stand hot pans on the vinyl flooring in the kitchen, presumably because there was no available space on the worktop in the (very large) kitchen due to it being a total tip and it was boiling over or on fire or something so I have a nice set of THREE separate burn/melted ring marks on the floor in front of the cooker. Those tenants did a bunk back to their home country leaving me their deposit to cover all the damage plus four months worth of rent arrears, which of course it didn't cover.

As for right to buy let's remember how popular it was. It propelled Mrs T and her party to a massive win in 1983 - sure, they had some help from Mr Galtieri, but they did particularly well in areas where Labour councils were digging their heels in and trying to block sales. Some of us also remember the Labour manifesto of that year ("the longest suicide note in history") which threatened promised to block all future sales and make the people who had already bought give first refusal to the LA at price paid plus improvements if they decided to sell.

In any event, that first rush of RTB in the Eighties is water under the bridge. Its thirty years ago, the discount has unwound, most of the houses have been sold on in the normal course, and even Jezza is not going to promise to take them back into public ownership at any price.

In the meantime why should private LLs go on providing the service and not get paid? You wouldn't expect any private trader to whom you owed money to give you more credit if it was not to their advantage.