If you needed to be living in a 2 bed rented flat in London by Nov..

[DFOD]

When do you need to start looking?

Wondering how long the process takes and when flats are advertised ahead of availability.

Is it competitive out there or plenty of availability?

Is there an app which shows rough rental prices per area - so you can narrow down to budget?

What did you put in to calculate that. A single person, no dependents, no illness, no savings is not entitled to any UC on 25k a year

Salary 25k - 35 hours per week
auto enrolment pension contribution 1250 p/a
Rent £1400 per month
living with relative with zero income

The relative hasnt got zero income, did you put the relative as a dependent?

Mother does not work. Only income would be UC

mothers calculation

They are non dependent family members.

Did you put the mothers income in or have it as zero on the daughters claim?

If they did it that way round the mother wouldnt be able to claim a portion of the rent as UC

The mother can’t claim a portion of the rent as she lives rent free with her daughter. You are not allowed to claim housing element as an individual if you live with family. It’s worked out on total household income.

on the daughters claim you have to say if the non dependent adult claims benefits or not.

It would be different if they were joint tenants but OP’s post implies the tenancy would be in daughter’s name.

the only person who can get exact figures is OP who knows the proper figures and the potential areas of London (for LHA). I used Ealing as an example.

The DD is 22.

That’s a very low household income for London. Most young people on that kind of money will live in shared accommodation and even living with 3 friends in zone 3 or 4 their rent will be around £700 each.

Must you live in London? Unless going for education, training or travel for a fixed term only, I would never relocate there without a very chunky income.

What’s LHA?

If the Dd is 22 she will be entitled to less then.

LHA is Local Authority Housing rate. It’s the amount of rent that Universal credit will help towards. It’s based on average rents in different local authorities. A single person under 25 is entitled to shared room in a house rate. A family are entitled to a certain amount of bedrooms based on number, ages & sexes of children etc.

My daughter’s rent last year in Ealing was £550 per month.

This year in Croydon it’s £480.

Random question OP - can the mother work remotely and do accounts for people in her home country? I don’t know how it would work for tax purposes but I’m sure the info is out there somewhere.

Just thinking that if she’s a qualified acct, she has the potential to earn a good salary.

For what? Even a room in a shared house without an en-suite bathroom starts at more than that on RightMove.

Yes this may be an option, that she is looking at.

She lived in a room in a 4 bed house with shared bathrooms & a garden about 10 mins walk from West Ealing station. On a nice road. The house itself was a bit run down but the area was nice. Rented via Dexters.

One of her housemates had an en-suite & he paid more.

She saw a beautiful place in Ealing Village gated community for £500 (single bed room so cheaper) but someone beat her too it.

OP, are the mother and daughter Ukrainian? Of course nothing you have said suggests they are, except the situation sounds like a common one for many Ukrainians who came to the UK but now want to be in the capital.

If they're from a particular nationality they may find cheaper housing offered on Facebook groups for people from that country who are in London.

Yes they are. I am hosting them in the Home Counties and out of touch with London rental prices, dynamics and processes etc as well as UC parameters.

Thats a good suggestion to encourage them to get ideas from others going through the same process.

Here's one of the Ukrainian housing groups I've seen posted. I don't know how useful it will be, sometimes these groups are just people looking, nobody offering; but it does look like there are some properties being listed too. Good luck to you all!:

www.facebook.com/groups/rent.ua/

As a landlord, if I had a vacancy (I don’t, we just rent out one flat that we own) I’d really want to find a way to help them.

I’d like to hope that many others would do the same.