Benefit's Britain for Landlord's & Tenant's

[Melboy]

Anyone else watching this program mainly centred around Hartlepool with 2 LA's who specialise in renting property to people on DSS benefit's. It's a real eye opener and should be compulsary viewing for all wannabee landlord's that being a landlord is not all beer and skittles and as shown last night having the wrong person in your property can cost you a lot of money.

It reinforces my decison not ever to have DSS tenant's AND yet again the glaring fact, as highlighted in this program, the senseless reason not to pay the landlord the rental money directly crops up time and time again.

I think COR should have put himself forward for this program

Caution advised watching this program for those landlord's with high blood pressure.

[Mortitia]

Was this on last night? Knowing H'pool a bit I am amazed its dominantly labour council manage to employ as many people as they do and even have grass on road verges cut on Saturdays - seen it with my own eyes.

No sign of austerity there then!

[Carryon Regardless]

I saw part of one of these programmes about a week ago.

I've experienced bad T's and bad property returns but I think they see worse than I on a more regular basis.

When you consider there are still properties available for around £16K the returns 'can' look attractive. The naive will be caught out by the abusers and legislation, but the company I watched side stepped legislation somewhat. The LL's that have teams in place (with the necessary skills) and fast response techniques, I believe, could make a good business of such a venture, a 'where there's muck there's brass' principle.

Clearly there will be significant losses but to my mind it would be the larger scale venture that would be successful.

[Richlist]

I watched some of last night's program and would agree with Melboy that it's enough to put most people off from dealing with housing benefit claimants.

It was certainly entertaining.

[fionaf]

I saw this programme and sympathised with the postman who'd brought a property for his retirement and was loosing lots of money. So sad he learnt the very very hard way. My core rules:

- No DSS (although have had some accidentally when they lost job and thought it was OK initially then it all went downhill...)

- have properties nearby so you can keep an eye on them (appreciate if you are a magnate sunning it in the canaries this may not be possible/desirable...)

- know the area where you have your properties really well

- choose the tenants yourself and not let anyone else do it as they don't have your interest at heart (add here the long list of tenant choosing that I've seen in the past)