Landlords refuse to rent flat to me because I have a toddler.

[StephA]

Hello Mumsnet.
I have twice been turned down for flats I wanted to rent, because I have a toddler (this was explicitly stated). Where I come from, that's ILLEGAL. Is is legal in the U.K. to do this? Is is normal? I am getting worried about finding a place to live, as there aren't many affordable flats in my area and my lease is expiring soon.

Sorry for not making myself clear. I mean when landlords withold the deposit for no good reason. Not the tenants leaving for no good reason! I can't spell withhold either! Just checked it.

Oh, I see. Yes, a tenant just upping and leaving would be awful.

I mentioned breaking the contract after the first 6 months, not before, though.

The scheme sounds in need of changing, why does it timetable it like that?! Seems stupid. But ... it doesn't make you a good LL to return it on time, if that is the law - or do you mean because they moved out earlier than the 6 months with no warning? If that, yes, I'd have kept the deposit

a couple of years ago due to unforeseen circumstances we had to start renting after being homeowners and I have to say it really shocked me too. The amount of family sized housing in family areas near schools etc that state 'no children' is staggering!

Viv It isn't possible for landlords to hold back a deposit for no good reason. All deposits have to be kept with or insured by the deposit scheme. The whole deposit is returned to the tenant unless the LL can prove that deductions are necessary.

LRD The scheme doesn't normally take 5 months to return a deposit apparently. In my case what happened was that the agreement renewed so I sent up an account and forwarded the funds to the scheme. The tenant married and changed her name. She gave me a copy of her marriage certificate as the funds were being sent to a bank account in a different name to the tenancy agreement. Nothing too difficult but this was beyond the capabilities of the deposit scheme. At one point they sent her a letter saying that I was contesting the deposit. As I had already repaid the deposit to her she knew I wasn't contesting anything.

The law pre deposit scheme said you need to return the deposit in a timely manner which gave a timeframe of 2 weeks as reasonable. At the time the deposit scheme was fairly new and I wasn't about to be their guinea pig so I followed the old law/ what I knew was the right thing to do.

Now the deposit scheme has been going longer the law is much clearer and no exact timeframe is given for the return of the deposit if the funds are kept with the deposit scheme. Basically I would have been in the right to not forward the tenant their deposit which I think is very wrong, hence I returned her money to her. The deposit scheme people were very annoyed with me doing this because the funds had to be paid directly to the tenant, not me. I had to show a copy of the cheque and she had to show the funds being deposited into her account. The fact that she called in and told them that I had repaid the deposit and I sent in the cleared cheque wasn't enough proof for them.

Ah, I see want. Sounds very complicated. Good for you for sorting it.

I am one of those evil landlords.

I do rent to people with children. One of my flats is in the same street as an outstanding primary so renting to people with children works really well for me as the flat never has any void periods.

I have had one really bad lot of tenants with two children, a toddler and a pre school one. They didn't pay rent and absolutely trashed the place. It cost me about £12k all in all to put right. The had no shame and on eviction day the bailiff had to get the police to carry them out in front of their young children.

It was a nightmare but not because of children because they were just the sort of folk who didn't like to pay and were self entitled.

The courts granted the eviction order at the first session despite children given the level of outstanding rental arrears (4 months in arrears guarantees a landlord eviction as long as you have served S21).

But the whole process took 7 months as I had to wait and serve S21 after 8 weeks nonpayment then wait for the court and the wait for the bailiff to have a slot for the eviction.

I nearly missed the court date as I had an EMCS with DD three days before. And I had to grant DH power of attorney to attend in my place. Stressful. And nightmare tenants don't consider the stress they put on others with their behaviour.

I currently have a couple with 3 children in the flat. So far so good and they seem ok. I expect there will be quite a lot of wear and tear afterwards with three young children but that is fine as long as they pay the rent, are nice to the neighbour and don't burn the place down.

Others here are correct. Leasehold property can be subject to clauses that include no pets and children (and wooden floors etc). And it's not always safe to rent a flat to those with children if it's on upper floors particularly old Victoria conversion with very large sash windows that are easy to fall out of.

The other possibility is to charge a reduced deposit but require rent to be paid three months in advance. This will be an incentive to the tenant to give proper notice.

Guy You are not allowed to do that. Rent paid in advance is considered a deposit. The LL would need to keep two months rent with the deposit scheme.

Oh and to other LLs re the Deposit Protection Service. They are an absolute fucking nightmare to deal with!!

The bad tenant I posted about above, well despite having a court order for almost £5k I couldnt get DPS to pass the deposit onto me. The photos of wrecked flat and contractors invoices for repairs didnt help either.

According to DPS they can't locate the ex tenant to see if he wants to contest the deposit

So three years later I am having to go back to court and pay a further £200ish to get a court order for the deposit.

In all this the DPS have caused me as much stress as the tenants did.

I have had numerous telephone conversations where I have been accused of all sorts by the DPS. So once I have had my new court order against DPS, I will take legal action against them for damages for interest and other costs.

Can you tell I am ?

QS. Just seen your post about HB. Yes you can get HB paid directly
To LL.

I requested it from the council with my bad lot of tenants. The HB is for the LL not the tenant.

Sadly I only found out the tenant was getting HB about 7 weeks before eviction so the other 5 months the tenant had been pocketing it and had in fact spent part of it on a new car. Nice.

I made sure I wrote to the councils housing office after the tenant was evicted with proof that they had intentionally made themselves homeless. This way they wouldn't be entitle to a council flat and jump the q on those who had been waiting years and actually deserved one.

Maybe landlords should just bocott the deposit scheme and and just increase the rent. Or maybe here should be compulsory insurance for tenants, like car insurance, to pay out to landlords if tenants breach their contrats, leave without notice, casue damage etc with reduced premiums for tenants with a good track record, and increased for worse risks....

skandi1, bloody hell that all sounds awful :(

my landlord isn't evil but I have three children and he buys me paint so i can make the place fresh

sorry, I think it's nice he buys me paint btw! it does make me paranoid though:)

If you boycott the deposit scheme, increase rent, and require tenants to have insurance, who will you find who can afford to rent? Surely the only people who'd have the money would also be able to buy.

I would think requiring tenants to have insurance would drive rents down. I suppose it might not be an awful idea if it were factored into the rent. But difficult - would the premiums be related to the size/quality of the place you rented?

Well thats part of the reason why rents are so high Guy. Too many tenants think LL are there to provide them with free housing. Also, I have had many a phone call asking for me to sort out stuff that I shouldn't have to sort out. The best was a tenant calling because the bin was very dirty and she wanted me to have someone come round to clean it. Instead I set up a cleaning service and charged them GBP100 more a month.

The only way to boycott the deposit scheme is not accept deposits. Compulsory insurance is a terrible idea because the cost would be very high. I would like to see the courts be more fair to both sides. There are dodgy LL out there who should not be allowed to operate and there are dodgy tenants who should not be allowed to get away with treating LL so badly. The problem is what do you do with dodgy tenants - you can't make them homeless. I do think tenants who destroy a property should be sent to jail. I had a tenant trash a house I was renting out. The damage caused was immense (around GBP60K in total not including legal fees that ran in to 10's of thousands) and the tenant did it because they knew there was no consequence.

skandi Sorry to hear that you also had a nightmare time with the deposit scheme. I was hoping that the scheme would be better for both sides.

Owl lady. Yes a nightmare but that is one bad tenant and everyone else have been decent.

Last tenant wasn't particularly clean but it took a cleaning lady 4 hours to sort and I didnt charge him for it because he was a lovely tenant paid on time every time was quite and nice to an elderly neighbour. And didn't complain when the washing machine broke and happily waited in on a Saturday for the new one to arrive.

You have to use a deposit scheme. There are two. The DPS and some sort of a trust account thingy both are a pain but DPS really take the piss.

Super. You can't really get around the deposit issue.

And it's an offence to not lodge a deposit with one of the two schemes and you will easily be found out.

And DPS are slow to release deposits to tenants. With my last tenant I released his full deposit to him the day he vacated. It took 5 weeks to get the DPS to pay it to him. Again numerous phone calls emails and hassle and in the end it was put down to a DPS "admin error". No apologies to the poor tenant or to me and they rude to deal with.

I don't take deposits so nothing to lodge with DPS or the other scheme. I rely on references from previous landlords and if they don't have a previous landlord and/or poor credit I ask for guarantors. I do credit checks on all tenants and guarantors. I figure that the losses from a problem tenants are more than the deposit anyway. FWIW I have found credit checks to be the best sorting tool.

W2BSM - you are wise - when our current tenants eventually move away we shall proabably not bother with a deposit either. Before these, we always had NQT teachers sharing from the local school, 100m away, and that always worked well even though there was a higjer turnover due to churn of staff - we shall revert to that.

My previous tenants has agreed to the deduction of £100 for garden clearance and £60 for cleaning. My estate agent explained to them that this was very reasonable, as I had not gone for the agency professional cleaning costing £330 plus vat, but got a local woman to clean for £60 saving them money.

My only problem now is my inflexible landlord who is in breach of contract, as they did not honour clause 8.8 saying that we could bring replacement tenants. They dismissed then without investigating whether they would be suitable or not, telling me they would let the estate agent put the house back on the market. Then they were not responding to new tenants offers. We want to leave early because our own tenants left and we could no longer afford rent.

They insist we stay the contracted term (6 more weeks) unless they get tenants in early. Which they wont, because they are planning window replacements upstairs and downstairs, and it is really convenient for them that we have left, and must pay rent until the end. They have an empty house, get rent paid, and can do major work. So, not sure where we stand.

QS - Have you been there for more than six months? If so, and you have an AST agreement I am 99% sure that all you need to do is give a months notice. I would ask a solicitor to confirm this is correct.

I have an assured short hold tenancy, 1 year contract from 12th september 2011 to 11 September 2012. There is no other break clause than 8.8, and another clause saying that the landlord may agree to surrendering the tenancy early on his discretion. Naturally, they dont.

I did actually read somewhere that a tenancy agreement could not be an AST if the annual rent was more than 25k. It is.

W2BSM. Interesting. I may consider trying that next time.

Credit info usually works well and out of 3 properties over a number of years I have only had 1 set of nightmare tenants.

It came about because I decided to try a different estate agents as they seemed to be offering a better fee and service structure. Well they took money on the side to sign off fake ID (passports in this case), and faked credit references.

I found out because they had even faked the EPC I had paid them to carry out. that started me off investigating.

Paperwork left behind by the tenant showed that he and his wife were claiming tax credits in 7 different names, had numerous bank accounts not just to the flat but multiple addresses and were claiming all sorts of state handouts in the various names.

I felt sorry for their children. Both were really young and clearly had little stability given their parents choice of dodgy lifestyle.

So back to the original OP. Many LLs let to children and do it happily. I wanted to show that the only dodgy tenant I had wasnt an issue because of children but because they were essentially criminals milking everyone.

Op you will find a great LL soon who won't mind children. Look for places near schools where many landlords rely on catchments to let their property quickly.

QS - as you are still renting the house, can you not refuse them permission to do this work while you are still, in theory, tenants?

We moved out of a house early, let the agents know we were moving, and one day when I was there giving the place a clean and sorting out some last minute bits, the landlord let himself in "to do some chores." I said he should ring and ask us (the agents backed me up). He got a bit arsey, but agreed. We had just paid for the carpets to be cleaned - I would not have been impressed if he had stomped all over them with muddy boots.