Renting from a family member and the hb element of UC...please help me

[lidlbitupset]

Hi, my niece was unable to rent anywhere to live. We tried lots of different ways to help and support her but we cannot act guarantors as we have no salaries. Also she has a dog, doesn't work and has quite severe mental health problems, including several hospital stays a year. It was impossible. We bought her a house and she said she could claim housing benefit and give it to us. She signed a shorthold tenancy agreement and has been sending us the lower amount but has applied for the full amount. Now the council have looked at her bank account they have seen a payment from her grandmother, my MIL, with the same name and are now questioning the family connection. They ahve sent her a form to fill in. The main problem I can see is that the house is rented to her at below market rent and also that I didn't bother taking a deposit and putting it in a scheme. I can of course do that now but the certificate will obviously show the date. Can anyone advise? We are not trying to claim unfairly, just help her...

Im disabled myself, I have MH issues and I privately rent, I’ve lived in the same house for 23 years and every single day I worry about what would happen if by landlord chose to sell up, as many are due to the recent changes in law. I fully understand how stressful it is for her and for you. Shes luckier than most to have a wealthy family memeber able to purchase a 200k house for her, UC won’t give a flying fuck about the emotional or personal reasons you have set up the rental the way you have.

You’d be surprised just how many people do things this way, who purchase houses outright with the sole intention of putting a long term unemployed family member in for the housing benefit. Then when caught out they say they were helping a vulnerable family member and rant about how unfair the system is complain about how other people get away with fraud etc. Everyone says the same so I’d focus less on getting defensive about the personal reasons why you have chose the set up you have, and more on legal advice and how you can prove it’s a legit tenancy.

There’s a few red flags that make it sound like a contrived tenancy and people have pointed these out and tried to say there may be bigger problems that just having HB stopped. That’s not me trying to be a dick to you. It’s being realistic, because the more you say, the less it looks like a legit and legal landlord/tenant situation.

You bought her a house, so she has no housing costs - but she’s claiming benefits to hand them over to you?
😮

How did you get a mortgage without an income?

The checks to get a mortgage would be similar as those to get a guarantor. If you could do one you could do the other.

She didn’t say she didn’t have an income. This has already been covered on the thread

If she has the income to obtain a mortgage big enough to buy a house, she has enough income to have been a guarantor.

I.e. this has been chosen as a route which enables op to get a mortgage paid off with housing benefit.

It is what it is. It is high unlikely to be true that she could not be a guarantor.

So? What’s the relevance of guarantors?

I take the implication to be that OP could've solved the niece's housing problem by being a guarantor rather than acquiring another property for her portfolio that hb can pay off.

How is it relevant though? That’s not what the Op did, she bought a house.

It's not irrelevant, as the chat has partly become about whether it's an altruistic deed or not. I guess PP is also answering the 'what's a person to do to help their struggling relative?' point too, saying be a guarantor instead of buying a house. Threads can open up to the wider debate not just be limited to the one situation.

It’s derailing really , and also there are various reasons stated in the OP that the family member struggled to get a rental, not just one. As you say people can open up the thread further to more opinions, and my asking another poster what they mean is just as valid, you don’t need to explain for them really, I’m sure that can do it themselves if they want to.

Yes ma'am. Off I go before you arrest me...

This happened to a family member. When you tell UC you have moved house they usually ask if the LL is a family member, which then kicks off a new process and it's all sent to a decision maker to decide if it's contrived or not. They ask things like:

• has the LL previously rented the property out and if so, for how much?
• would the LL start legal proceedings if there was a late payment of rent?
• did LL put deposit into relevant deposit scheme?

This all sounds highly suspicious. You can't be a guarantor as you have no income yet have multiple rental properties.. Are they all empty or are you only charging your niece rent?

It seems like they may have made a mistake if you declared that you were related, they should have sent it to the decision maker before accepting the housing costs. The bad news is that even if it was the JC's fault, she will still have to repay the money.

The thing you should have done was rent her one of your existing rental properties and done everything properly rather then contriving a tenancy for her.