They want my cats to pay £1000 deposit.....

[BadgerBadger]

...unfortunately, they can't afford it so wont be able to move with DD's and I to our new home.

I would pay for them but can't because the same letting agents are already dragging £1600 (or £1700, they don't seem to have decided) in deposit and initial rent.

Following the £200 I had to pay in 'admin' fees just to apply for the flipping property, I'll be resorting to carrying our belongings a couple of hundred miles by hand, rather than hiring a van, at this rate!

grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! dont you just love renting they have us by the round furry things

good god. even my 3 cats would be hard pressed to cause £1000 worth of damage.
and 'admin' fees - I'd love to see an actual breakdown of what you get for your £200

what?

It's absurb how much lettign agents charge. Our current agent drives aroudn in a lovely little audi convertable. Cos she charges £200 for the application (which is processed by an outside agency for £39), and then charges both the landlady and ourselves for the inventory on top of that. We had to pay £1800 up front for rent and deposit as well. We lost £300 on our last deposit for repainting. The walls were flippign magnolia, obviously they were going to need repainting after 18mnths! I asked before leaving if I needed to clean the paint, and was told it was doen as a matter of course. After I left they employed soemone to do it 'professionally' They then knocked up a dodgy invoice, as the people they use are soem dodgy looking east asians, who don't understand any english.

PMSL AAA @ them having us by the round furry things, well, at the term at least. TBH I'm devastated at the thought of leaving the felines behind but I just haven't got the money!

I just had the most ridiculous circular conversation with the LA over the £1600/£1700 dispute.

AAAAAAAAaaaaaaaarrrrrrrgggggggggghhhhhh!!

bloody pees me off were paying more than their god damn mortgage and have to ,,argggggggggh!!
i want a home that you can stick drawing pins in the walls and decorate how you want and plant plants that will be there when they grow ,,what do they expect you to not actually live in the house as in have a life ,,inc pets i might add! whilst you pay through the nose!! grrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

I know! It's the first time I'll be renting privately for a long time. I'm only moving out of my home because of separation from xH (my thumb tacked, planted gardened, chlid and feline friendly home I might add ).

Thing is, the letting agency told me I could bring a cat, it was only when I asked if I could bring the two of them that they decided to try to extort (further) ridiculous amounts of cash from me?!?!

It sounds a bit odd - surely it is up to the landlords if you are allowed to have animals? We own a house and rent it out and have a "no pets" clause. Ask for a copy of the contract and check. If there isn't a "no pets" clause then surely you should be OK to have your cats there?

Agencies can be dodgy - one agency pocketed six months of our rent. We never got it back either. Tenant paid to agency but agency never transferred to us.

BB ,,sorry bout you losing your thumbtacked house ,we sold ours when we split up ,,and i dont miss the house as we never seemsed happy there but i do miss it being MINE!

where bouts you moving to?

if they permit one how about telling them just one is going. and smuggling the other in. if they did visit and spot two you could insist it was a visiting cat you'd not seen before?

I spoke with the lettings manager this morning, clarity at last!

It turns out a double deposit was required for even one cat but they told me the reason for the double deposit was because I'm having to apply for housing benefit because of the split.

So, all told, £1600 +fees without the cats.
£2000 plus fees with (they're doing me a deal apparently !)

I can't afford to bring them, sadly, but I'm going to proceed anyway. It's perfect in every other way and I know so many landlords/letting agents don't allow pets that I could be waiting some time and may have to make other concessions to find another property.

Fennell, that could have worked if the single cat thing had been as explained to me originally! Although, I think I'd be too wary of being evicted over it to go for it

Thanks for your advice!

why are they demanding two months up front? If they are concerned about the housing benefit, couldn't u offer them a guarantor? Then maybe they would accpet less upfront?

Have to have a guarantor anyway due to HB on top of everything else! Seems excessively cautious on their part. I think in reality they'd rather not rent out to someone in receipt of beneifts, it's a vaguely disguised discrimination, IMO.

AAA, Somerset

Sounds just like us last year BB.... our new house wouldn't let us have our cats either - we'd only bought them for dd two years previous and she was devastated...still asks me where they are! Our landlords/estate agents still find wys to ask for stupid amounts of money now and then as well.... it was 50.00 to 'type up' our newest lease now they want to re-reference us for which we have to pay 75.00... makes me so !!!!

god, u lot shud have taken my house! Thelady living here prev has cats, dog, rabbit, fish indoors and outdoors and some small furry thigns upstairs. It did put me off a bit, but the house is lovely. Was bit peed off when the dts have bits of rubber bone in their mouth after moving in!

Ther is def a discrmination against hb applicants. I've had trouble int he pst. The general perception is that they are going to ewreck the place. I really don't know where they get the idea from. I've also had refusals on the basis of al the paperwork involved. Don't understand that one neither. Some areas it is virtually impossible to find a landlord.

Glad u gettng sorted though, and hope you wil be happy in your new home.

We had a potential tenant who would have been on a combination of HB and a secure deposit scheme. We just felt it was too much risk for us all. The amount of HB wouldn't have been calculated until after the tenant and ourselves had signed up, so she couldn't be 100% sure she could afford the difference if it came through less than she needed, and we weren't going to get an actual cash deposit, just a guarantee from a charity. We also couldn't commit to a lease longer than 6 months and as she, her kids and their pets were already being made homeless, it didn't seem very fair to potentially make her move on so soon. So in the end it wasn't about whether she'd "wreck the place" at all.

We rent our house out, and have had HB tenants in the past, without any problems. If anything it meant that we knew that the rent would be paid on time, weekly, although it was paid in arrears.
We don't use a letting agent as such, our solicitor drew up our tenancy agreemnet and all the rent comes straight into our account. The only thing we'd to pay was £58.00 for drawiing up the tenancy agreement.

it does sound outrageous to have a double deposit AND need a guarantor.

we are probably moving from own home to rented for a few months but I can leave our 2 cats with my sister . we'll probably have to pay a double deposit for excess infants with associated wrecking potential. we are hard on furniture, definitely. we can make a new sofa look old in weeks....

good luck with the move BadgerBadger, is it to Somerset? we'll be nearby in Devon, hopefully.

Saltire, financially I agree that it could be more secure to receive rent directly from the council rather than a tenant, which is why the discrimination aspect is apparent to me IYSWIM?

I can understand the landlord/letting agents concern regarding covering the rent due to the HB arrears and I'm happy to put that money forward. The thing is, anyone could come unstuck and have difficulty with the rent but because I'm on benefits I'm not considered what? Responsible enough to be allowed to cover the difference myself if need be?

Lizs, from a tenant's POV, I am able to put up the deposit in cash,plus two months rent, plus provide a guarantor, which is why I'm even being given consideration as a tenant. It's a shame for this lady that she wasn't in a position to do so but I don't see why the deposit scheme could be considered a problem anyway? They cover damages in the same way as a deposit would and are regulated.

As for the 6 month point, I see what you're saying and you obviously went a long way to consider what would be kinder/more practical for the lady and her children. As a tenant, personally I'd be furious if a property was refused on a similar issue, which, should ultimately be my decision (whether I was prepared to move on in 6 months, if need be).

Fennel, I hadn't realised you are heading south too! Good luck with you move

Funnily enough, when I spoke with the agent earlier, I asked them to remove the sofas for exactly that reason!

(Option of unfurnished or part furnished anyway.)

Badgerbadger, agree you soudn in a stronger position and that fininding oneslef shy of the rent could happen to anyone. Our first tenants were airhostesses who were made redundant one by one after 9/11.

In the lady's case it wasn't any one of those things individually , but a few things just didn't stack up in a way to inspire confidence overall. It wasn't an inconsiderable rent and the house was technically considered too big for her family so it was quite likely she would not get all the HB she needed to be able to afford it. At the end of the day the decision not to proceed was mutual, at least as far as we can tell from the agent (who was cr*p anyway and probably only told us half the story !).

Anyway hope you get moved and setteld soon BB.

lol Lizs, from my experience so far, letting agents seem to have a habit of doing this half a story thing

I see what you mean, I have been told (verbally) by the rent office/HB dept that I'd be entitled to a large portion of the rent as it's the correct sized house in relation to number of occupants, if not, applying would certainly be risky.

So, entirely different story in your case!

Thanks for your good wishes.