To think landlords are more likely to accept benefits now?

[chubbycheeks26]

Given then current situation and many families being forced on to benefits?

Or even mortgages and insurance policies allowing it? Could rents rise? All seems like it could be a complicated mess. They'll have a tough time renting to just keywords with stable jobs.

Aside from paying housing benefit direct to landlords and stopping reclaiming fraudulent benefit claims from landlords instead of tenants (which I’ve only just learned from this thread is a thing), it would help if councils would stop telling people to stay put until they are served an eviction notice before the council will house them. Months of unpaid rent plus legal costs is a big worry.

Insurance and mortgages are also relevant here, as pointed out by PP.

There's so many people on top up benefits anyway that landlords are depriving themselves access to a massive client base if they won't consider it.

As for the direct to landlords payments, that stopped around 30 years ago due to landlords pissing and moaning about being liable for fraudulent recovery. You could request housing benefit to be paid to your landlord after that, but it's been paid directly to tenants for decades. I think UC is the same ie you can request it goes directly to the landlord but I think you have to have a reason eg vulnerable or in arrears.

@safariboot there are full Time working people not on benefits who don't pay their rent as there are benefit tenants who do!

@Sorka that's why I mentioned insurance and mortgages in my OP.

Well they should be paying their rent in the first to avoid eviction, it's what I have done and will do - ya know pay the rent on time. With other reasons for eviction like selling up etc I would absolutely get out and stay with family somewhere and be 'overcrowded' then let them chuck me out. Not screw over a landlord.

Remaining in your home until the tenancy is ended by court decision isn't "screwing over" anyone. It's legal and it isn't breach of contract. Moving out when you don't have to means that you're "screwing over" yourself (and whichever unfortunate schmuck you persuade to give you their sofa in preference to remaining in your home).

@Covine doesn't make it fair on the landlord.

no, in fact less likely, the rental market has become very competitive especially in certain area's of the country

@Sorka

Aside from paying housing benefit direct to landlords and stopping reclaiming fraudulent benefit claims from landlords instead of tenants (which I’ve only just learned from this thread is a thing), it would help if councils would stop telling people to stay put until they are served an eviction notice before the council will house them. Months of unpaid rent plus legal costs is a big worry.

Insurance and mortgages are also relevant here, as pointed out by PP.

Trouble is councils have no choice but to expect people to stay put, if they have someone who tells them they have 3 months to leave, they cant allocate immediate resources to them because they know that before then they will have 100s of people needing help who literally would have nowhere to sleep that night, its a bad situation for both tenants, and LLs, also I would imagine they would have to investigate why the tenant is being evicted, if its for non payment of rent or anti social behaviour its possible that the tenant may have made themselves intentionally homeless so the council may not be able to rehouse them in social housing, I would imagine such checks would be made while the tenant still had somewhere to live.

@jackstini but are you legally obliged, I have tenancy agreements in the past and present and none have said anything about if my circumstances change then I need to inform the landlord. Never had a estate agent mention anything about circumstances changing either.

doesn't make it fair on the landlord.

So what? Tenancy doesn't end with notice. Notice is literally that, just notice. You can either agree and move out (ending the tenancy) or stay until the court orders the tenancy to end. If you literally have nowhere to go other than bunking up with family then you would be foolish indeed to give up a tenancy before you have to. That extra time could just buy you enough space to get allocated something permanent at which point you will never have to be in that position again.

Tenants do ofc need to keep paying rent throughout so all the landlord loses is a bit of time.

Shelter should probably talk to NatWest then since my mortgage with them forbids it!
I don't think so. I had a letter sometimes last year to inform me that they had changed the rules and it was now permitted with their BTL mortgages.

Could you have binned the letter before reading?

Remaining in your home until the tenancy is ended by court decision isn't "screwing over" anyone
Of course it using you are breaching the term of your contract.

The law allows it as last resort because of the pressure on social housing.

I guess this is going to turn into yet again a 'lets despise landlords, they don't deserve their mortgage being paid for' thread.

I very much doubt it. Mortgage providers are unlikely to change their terms without significant pressure from the government. Government is unlikely to do that without significant pressure from the public. And the public are unlikely to do that because of benefits scroungers.

I very much doubt it
Yet NatWest did, first lockdown.

We’ve always rented to tenants on benefits and apart from one bad experience years ago (and that was to do with lifestyle, there were no issues with receiving rent money or maintenance/damage or the property) we have had no issues.

In fact, DH and I were only just updating our accounts and saying that during this pandemic we’ve had the full rent paid on time from our benefits tenants every month, they’ve seemed to be unaffected by this whole thing, whereas we’ve had to reduce rent or give a rent holiday to some of our tenants who are not on benefits.

We don’t have mortgages in our rental properties so I’m not sure what the score is there with regards to whether they allow benefits tenants or not.

It’s really irrelevant if not all benefit claimants are “like that”. Enough of them are that it’s understandably not a risk landlords want to take.

A guarantor really isn’t that much of a bonus.

Going back a few years, when I first ceased full time work I applied for housing benefit which covered about 50% of my rent. I never told my landlord as I did not think it was any of their business and they never found out. I was never late with the rent so they had no reason to query my financial circumstances. They probably assumed (rightly) that I had private pension arrangements in addition to my state pension). That situation lasted for several years until I managed to get a successful business going and I was able to drop the claim.

I would guess that there are many working people who have had to claim benefit in this crisis. If they never approach their landlord to lower or defer the rent then the latter is unlikely to find out unless some financial crisis ensues.

There is an old saying :- what the eye does not see the heart does not grieve over.

I believe that LHA/housing benefits are paid in arrears so maybe a change in the benefit system would also be needed

They'll never pay housing costs in advance. If someone leaves their home, their entitlement to benefits to cover rent ends on that day. If they'd been paid benefits in advance for the rent, they'd be overpaid and the DWP would then seek to recover the costs.

The DWP will never voluntarily risk overpaying benefits.

There was a discrimination case last year where it was found that refusal to let to tenants on benefits was in breach of the DDA. The judgment in the case is here 431bj62hscf91kqmgj258yg6-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/20.07.02-Redacted-Court-Order.pdf for anyone who wants to read the reasons.

There was a recognition at the time that this put those landlords whose BTL mortgages forbade them to let to benefit claimants in a difficult position, because they were faced with the choice of breaching the DDA or breaching the terms of their mortgage.

The general view on benefit adviser forums was that this was a matter between landlords and the mortgagees, and that the relevant condition of the mortgage agreement was now unenforceable because it required the landlord to act illegally.

I'd be interested to know if any of the landlord organisations have sought legal advice as to how landlords should proceed now and, if so, what that advice was.

We would have no issue renting to people on benefits - like everyone there are good tenants and bad! But our mortgage and insurance specifically forbid it!
The only difference with the recent legal cases is that when we recently advertised one of our houses to rent, we couldn't say "no benefits" in the advert, so we had one lady who came and viewed, and seemed perfect, but then revealed she was claiming benefits, so we had to tell her we had picked someone else. That was just a massive waste of everyone's time!

It’s actually a really bad idea to have insurance that doesn’t allow you to rent to people claiming housing benefit and you will be leaving yourself vulnerable. For one, unlike the preconceptions, most people claiming an element for housing benefits are professionals and in full time work. Particularly in the South East where rents are so high you’d need to earn £80000 plus a year to afford them without help. And you wouldn’t know if they claim them after the initial checks. Many years ago I separated from my then husband and had to claim a potion of my rent from the council. I continued to work full time and had a small amount of housing benefit from the council. It’s paid direct to the claimant so they have the dignity and responsibility of managing their own money without risking landlords chucking them out because of housing benefit rules.
Unless a tenant gives permission for a landlord to be told so rent can be paid directly to them in the case of arrears, the landlord has no right to be told how the tenant is getting their money.

There is a difference between people who are out of work and are unable to make up any of the rent themselves and claim all their living expenses through UC and the vast majority of housing benefit claimants who often claim only small amounts, do not claim for the entirety of their tenancies and can pay most things themselves through work.

As a landlord you’ll be at risk of invalidating your own insurance as it is legally unenforceable to require your tenant to inform you if the way they get money changes. You need to change your insurance if it has that clause, especially during such turbulent and unpredictable times.

@Pillowcase123

And Barclays too! Signed my new mortgage in Dec 2020 and it includes a restriction on letting to anyone on benefits.

The judgment in the Shelter DDA case was issued in June 2020. I'm surprised that that condition was still being included in BTL mortgages 6 months later.

Of course it using you are breaching the term of your contract.

It's not breach of contract. In fact it's continuing with the contract. Which is the opposite of breach.

I have no issue with renting to people who receive benefits but the insurance company wouldn’t allow it. The mortgage company was fine but not the insurers.

It was fine until the switch to UC, when the tenant began receiving the money and we stopped being paid a penny. Eventually we managed to get it paid directly to us, but several months in arrears

You're not alone there, @ginandronicformeplease. It has caused massive problems for housing associations and councils, with the DWP taking up to a year to pay arrears even after processing the APA that makes rent payments direct to landlords.

HAs and LAs still charge rent weekly, and there was an anomaly in the way UC manages the weekly-to-monthly calculation. This meant that all social landlords lost a week's rent last year for every tenant on an APA. That's a lot of money for a big HA with maybe 20,000 tenants.