to not get why I'm being turned down for rental properties?

[Fpbww]

In our town (don't know if this is common in other areas) the process for renting is - view house you are interested in, submit a detailed application form (the longest has been 8 pages long) confirming employers, income, bank details, addresses and so on. Sometimes providing ID, bank statements, wage slips, you name it.

The landlord then has a look at the applications and decides who he/ she likes the look of best. And if you get to that stage, THEN they do any referencing, credit checks etc.

We've applied for 5 houses in the last month. We were offered one (having passed stage 1 we were invited to agree referencing/ checks), but decided due to some concerns over maintenance (a couple of damp patches which the LL tried to say were not actually damp!) we decided not to proceed.

With the other 4, we've been rejected at the first stage.

All different estate agents (there are about 20 locally) so it's not that

I can't see why on paper we are not attractive to a LL?
We're both in our 40s, no children at home, non smokers, no pets. We both work from home. We're looking to rent for up to 2 years.
Our joint salary is 3x the affordability criteria. DP is a director of his own small business, which I know is not always attractive to landlords, but his earnings are 50% of mine, so even if you didn't include his salary I could more than afford the place on my own.

Am I missing something? We needed to give notice this week but now are holding off as there doesn't seem much chance of finding something else quickly.

If it was a renters market OP I think you would have been snapped up by the first place you offered on. However, as it isn't at the moment, I would see from your application forms that you had lived seperately up to now, and that would concern me that your relationship might not be as secure as other longer term partners - which to be fair seems to be the case, as you say (very sensibly) that you wouldn't buy a property with your partner immediately, presumably because you want to know first that you are compatible when living together full-time - so you could actually want to give up the tenancy far sooner than you suggest on your application form. Are neither of your and your partner's present rentals suitable for one of you to move in with the other?

@dreamingbohemian that isn’t what I said. People earning well over the affordability criteria are much more likely to be renting as a short term solution before buying. Country estates don’t as a rule sell their houses. The landowners and charities I worked for owned multiple villages with current and retired staff and private tenants, it was in their benefit to look for long term tenants who would contribute to a community, not people passing through as a stop gap.

In return tenants got fair rents, could decorate the house as they liked and had the security of knowing their home wasn’t going to be sold from under them.

Round our way people are being ridiculous with rentals. Offering over the asking rent, paying 6 months/a year in advance....that kind of thing. It is ridiculously competitive so don't take it personally.

Renting has gone crazy the house next door to be has just gone up for rent at nearly double the price of mine. I’m sure there will be people snapping the landlords hand off but it’s so so sad as the house hell the area really isn’t worth it.

The agent will be picking not the landlord as he is very hands off abs the agent is well known for placing terrible tenants in that house too.

Have you googled both your names? Turns up social media posts sometimes.

I'm a a landlord and would put your application to the bottom of the pile. I'm looking for long term tenants to stay many years rather than someone wanting 2 years max. It's not worth the hassell or expense to advert, pay for reference and credit cheques, redecorate when you moved out etc

Tried slipping the letting agent a bribe?

@HalzTangz

I'm a a landlord and would put your application to the bottom of the pile. I'm looking for long term tenants to stay many years rather than someone wanting 2 years max. It's not worth the hassell or expense to advert, pay for reference and credit cheques, redecorate when you moved out etc

She’s already mentioned that they don’t know that! As the boxes to Rick are only 12 months + or under

@HeartvsBrain unfortunately my house (which I own) is in another part of the country, DP needs to live locally for family reasons, his place is ok in the short term but very much a bachelor pad, it's not big enough for us both to live comfortably.

We've been together for some years now but had resigned ourselves to living apart for another 5 years at least as my job was very much office based in London, too far to commute from DP. However with Covid I'm now permanently WFH and have to go to London 3-4 times a year, which has changed everything for us, if we can find a place to rent that is!

@Horst there's been a definite increase in prices here too, not double (yet) but houses that when DP moved 2 years ago were £500-575 are now up for £675-700. The places we're looking at that are £900 were £750 last year.

@MondayYogurt that's a good suggestion. DP has a very popular name, I have an unusual name that's a bit foreign. If you Google it I come up on the website of the company I work for; at least it confirms it's me 🙂

We've had an idea that possibly why we were turned down for the 2 most recent applications was because we specified a date (in 3 weeks time) as our move in date on applications.

On the basis both properties are currently tenanted (and I know one of them was definitely not scheduled to move out til after 20 Nov) we didn't think that was unreasonable, plus it ties in with DP's notice period for his current house (which runs from the 3rd of the month) but still allowing some overlap.

Our suspicion is that the successful tenants may have said asap as their date and the landlords wanted new people in within a day of the move out date.

So back to the drawing board - or not, because having nothing pending, DP hasn't given in his notice and can't now til 3 December (for 3 January) so really there's no point in us looking in the 2 weeks at least, as we can't move until after Christmas.

Honestly your going to have to pay rent to cover the notice period. It’s no use only looking for two weeks a month kind of thing.

@Horst

Honestly your going to have to pay rent to cover the notice period. It’s no use only looking for two weeks a month kind of thing.

I agree you're going to have to have some overlap unfortunately.

I would second checking your credit reports. Are you sure they're not running them even at the application stage? Always seems suspicious that something is off on your credit report when you're unexpectedly getting turned down for stuff like this.

We're allowing for a 7-10 day overlap. Presumably though the landlord also should have some gap between tenants? I don't want to be moving in the day someone's moving out, what if they don't leave? Or leave a load of rubbish or even damage behind?

I don't think they are running credit reports but even if they are, both ours are pretty good, I think from memory DP's is slightly better than mine probably because I have no current borrowing/ loans.

Yes there is normally a brief empty period but getting two tenancies to line up to a small 10 day window isn’t very realistic.

We had a month overlap on ours and that was seen as pretty normal and that was after paying a holding fee otherwise it would of been a two month overlap and that was over 10 years ago.

Looking at moving again and again we are expecting a month or two overlap on rents, even housing benefit claimants get an extra allowance due to overlapping tenancies.

My DP absolutely wouldn't want to overlap by a month, he refuses to waste money like that.

On one of the houses we applied for, the tenant was moving out after 20/11 - not sure when but could have been a few days later.

We'd asked to start on 25/11, which we hoped would give at least 3 days between tenant moving out and us moving in, and of course was still an overlap for DP of 10 days or so.

Clearly we don't know if that was the reason we were turned down, but could be I suppose if another applicant had said 'immediately' and landlord wanted them in from the day, or day after tenant left.

Or they thought you wanted to move in too fast and it gave no time for repairs, redecorating and deep cleaning.

Yes landlords want to avoid long empty periods but good landlords want enough time to fix things and get everything good for the next tenant.

Why would a landlord throw away potentially hundreds in rent if he didn’t have to. In this market, you are very unlikely to get anything.

I used to have people hand the keys back at 9am, the cleaners, maintenance workers and gardeners would be in during the day and then I’d hand the keys to the new tenants at 5pm. Nobody is going to agree to having a void if it isn’t necessary.

If in the exit inspection is was apparent work was needed I’d have built that in to the availability date. It was up to the new tenant when they moved in but they had to pay rent from the availability date.

Yes true - obviously we could have moved in any time up to 3 December. perhaps next time if the form permits (some are limited to date entry only) we could say X date, however we are flexible.

Not sure if it's helpful but we were told we were 1 of 4 who applied for our house. It was then narrowed down to us and another similar family . Me and DH DS4 and DD2. However we had two dogs and they didn't. We got the house to our surprise and when we asked why, they said it was because our job titles appeared more secure in the current market.

Have you asked the letting agent what the problem might be?

@Arbitan yes - the agents said they aren't able to discuss due to DPA, but that our applications were fine.

A few landlords have commented (including myself) saying it's the potential short termness of your rental that would put them off. Is there any way to not disclose this when you make an application?

It depends on the application. So some just ask for you to indicate whether you want up to or over 12 months, some ask for you to complete a box with no of months, I've even seen one that the choice was short or long term. In any future forms so far as possible we'll try and make ourselves look like a longer term prospect.

I think you may end up having issues if you aren't prepared to pay for any overlap. In effect you are asking for a landlord to leave it empty for a period longer than they may want to when another applicant can move in straightaway without a (longer than required) void.