Paying 6 months rent upfront...

[Suzi7979]

Hi, Landlord is asking for 6 months rent paid upfront. Can I claim universal credit including housing element during the first 6 months?

I don't know anything about UC as not from UK but that seems extremely risky tbh. Tread carefully!

Don’t know about the UC question. But when we first moved to UK, we paid rent 6mos upfront because we were foreign and had no U.K. credit score. This was through a letting agency though, so we had formal contract and everything.

I'd ask them directly tbh. Perhaps you can get them to pay landlord directly so you're always six months in advance? I think the savings limit for being able to claim UC is really low (6K) so I don't know if by paying rent in advance it'd count as deprivation of assets or some such

Thank you for the replies.

I think you'd really need to ask UC! I expect they'd want to know where the 6 months rent came from - in my opinion you'd be really lucky to get a housing element for the 6 months in hand, in addition to living costs. It suggests you have access to private funds which I assume they'd want to know more about.

However no one here really knows so best to ask them!

Yes you can, I did it as it was the only way I was able to rent while on UC and I just produced a letter from the agent and the landlord stating this.

I don’t know but do you really have to do that? Would there be other options??