UK Landlord Forum / Life

hi,

Iv been in a privately rented properties for the last 6 and a half years, rent is always up-to-date.
Im on long term sick, my partner is my full time carer. We get apx £2200 pcm in total.

now the problem i have is trying to find a property in a location that we want, we want to be near the coast with a beach in distance of walking (neither of us drive). we own two English springier spaniels that are fully house trained and trained using working dog temperament (lets face it they are a handful otherwise) hence the location etc we are looking for. We have also done the UC switch over, so that is not an issue of landlords waiting for rent while that's happening

what i have found tho is estate agents ether dont explain the full information to the landlords so they basically look at it as dss. no way or they just try to find a property 'near' ie miles away from any beach.

I literally just have no idea how to move forward at the moment, we are admitting everything upfront but for some reason they all seem to shoot you down even tho its affordable to us, we have very good rental history in regards to paying rent (think we fell slightly behind during the UC switch, however it was made up straight away) and even saying that, the landlady when asked for references at the moment hasn't even brought that up, she literally just says rent is always up-to-date and we dont cause any problems, which is true. In fact only thing we ever nag about is if something is wrong with the central heating etc that we are not allowed to fix our selves.

its not even like my dogs chew or damage the property, one of them is 5 year old and the other just over 1, never caused damage at all. (including pee/poop). We even own a carpet cleaner for winter when the dogs paws are mucky.

so in our situation how do u start looking? The last we tried was throw an estate agents and everything got agreed (dss/dogs) but then the landlord decided to pull out after a week. lucky because the landlord pulled out we get the initial £300 back. When i say pulled out, the property is back up with the same estate agent.

anyone got any advice on this?
Thanks,
Phil

You are in receipt of UC.

You are also admitting you had some recent rent arrears (you blame it on an admin. situation and I accept you are blameless, but that really doesn't matter to the person who wants their money).

This is no different in anyone's mind to someone in receipt of other benefits... and, therefore, the tentative and circumspect responses should be expected to be just the same. What I mean by that is... well... the [perceived] risk is all on the Landlord, so they rightfully become nervous. Every Landlord who's been around a while knows the challenges when dealing with Councils, with authorities... with payments in arrears, no support for Landlords if things go wrong, bad advice when tenancies come to an end etc. - the list is quite long, it would serve you well to understand these perceived risks. I, myself, let properties to 2 Tenants who are in receipt of benefits (whether we call it LHA or UC doesn't really matter) and one has been a model Tenant and one has caused me a lot of trouble. It colours your view. It's impossible for it not to.

There's hardly any upside to taking on Tenants in receipt of benefits. Once things have settled down, and payments are being made, it's the truth that most of them are less mobile and stick around longer - so if you're interested in longer tenancies (as a Landlord) then there's a positive right there. Often I have found, because they intend to be there for a long time, they look after the property more... there's a positive right there. But it's hard to come up with other positives.

For you, you may need to go fishing... first of all, yes, you should be honest - that's the only way to go with this... but maybe, if you are kinda flush with cash, you can incentivise the Landlord (or Agents you talk to) by, say, offering a chunk of rent up-front (everyone likes that, it demonstrates you aren't on the financial edge) or boosting the Deposit taken beyond that what is asked for - maybe double it? All of these things show that you understand the real-life situation and you've thought about it, and you've come up with an idea to "soften the blow"... or make you more attractive than the next prospective Tenant who comes along.

Adding to this your pets... wow. You accept, obviously, that you are going to be far down the list in order of preferred Tenants. Add to this you're on long-term sick and it raises the spectre (with Landlords) of whether you might require any adaptations for your condition (adaptations that may not cost them money, but adaptations that will still alter their asset).

Good luck.

Also... being somewhat brutal... you can't say that rent is always up to date but, in the same post, admit that you were behind recently.

Sorry to say,I would love to move to some areas with beaches etc.for my dogs and the lifestyle,but the costs and practicalities are daunting.I don't mean to thrown cold water on your idea,but is this a case of the grass being greener? Being allowed to keep dogs is no small thing.