Housing Benefit Deposit

[lesley mcmillan]

Hi all

What would you do?

I am fairly new to this, I have one buy to let at the moment which has been problem/stress free for the last 12 months with a great tennant.

I have just purchased another property and invited applications from Housing support/local housing allowence. I have one very interested applicant who can give me the deposit but not the month in advance as she states because she will be getting housing benifit/local housing allowence, She can not afford the deposit and the month in advance. She thinks they will send the first cheque to me, but it can take up to 6 weeks for this to happen. I feel a bit concerned, she will be in my property rent free until this comes through. Would you stick by your guns and only except a tenant who can give both on day of entry.

How would I go about getting a credit check done on potential tennants.

Thanks again, your a helpful bunch.

[Bradley]

Hi all

What would you do?

I am fairly new to this, I have one buy to let at the moment which has been problem/stress free for the last 12 months with a great tennant.

I have just purchased another property and invited applications from Housing support/local housing allowence. I have one very interested applicant who can give me the deposit but not the month in advance as she states because she will be getting housing benifit/local housing allowence, She can not afford the deposit and the month in advance. She thinks they will send the first cheque to me, but it can take up to 6 weeks for this to happen. I feel a bit concerned, she will be in my property rent free until this comes through. Would you stick by your guns and only except a tenant who can give both on day of entry.

How would I go about getting a credit check done on potential tennants.

Thanks again, your a helpful bunch.

It seems a bit dodgy to me, I asked not the same question but a similar one, on a different topic, as to whether I should stear clear of DSS earlier today, not had any replies yet, there are a lot of people on here from what I have read that seem to have a lot of knowledge we don't, so hopefully they will answer come morning. But for what it's worth I don't think I would accept that, I spoke to an online place that seemed to be able to sort this out and as long as the tenant had a guarantor then it was fine. I am going to make more enquiries with them next week and I will let you know what I think, they did seem genuine enough though, they did the credit checks too and could guarantee your rent from what I understood, take a look at the online lettings topic, it may help. Also with some changes that I have heard are coming up the councils are going to pay DSS not the landlord, so I am a bit concerned myself. Good luck

[Grampa]

The tenant can apply for the first months rent in advance from the council which is in fact a loan to the tenant and by the time the 2nd months rent is due the LHA would have started. The LHA though paid in arrears will still be from day one of the tenancy.

If you want the LHA payments direct to yourself (which I do for a lot of my tenancies) make it a requirement of the tenancy and if the tenant gets paid the full amount with the month in hand also, the tenancy can run well as long as you keep an eye on the council payments and deal with and problems asap.

Regarding the deposit the council also do a deposit bond to the value of 6 weeks rent. No money changes hands at the start and you only claim against it at the end of the tenancy if needed but it is only used for damage not rent arrears. This is normally applied for (by the tenant) at the same time as the 1st months rent in advance.

Make sure you have a signed inventory.

The good thing about the deposit bond is you dont need to protect a deposit.

One last thing if you havent dealt with benefit tenants or the council before GET A GUARANTOR.