No DSS
Professionals only
No commercial vehicles
No pets
No children
No bad credit
Not suitable for families
No brown eyes
No brown eyes? Well, that one I made up but all the rest are true. We’ve seen so many ‘perfect places over the last few months of looking for a new home, only to call up and be told the particular landlord only wants childless tenants. No amount of explaining that my six year old is past the age of drawing on walls and far too young to cause a racket stumbling into the communal bins whilst trying to sneak back into the flat at 2am seems to assuage their initial reluctance to rent to these miscreant parent types. To those landlords, I hope your tenants all have triplets. Would you have to cancel their tenancy then I wonder?
The bad credit isn’t usually written on the initial rental advertisement, but wait till you put down your holding deposit and they come back and tell you that although your other references are fine and you met the other criteria (you’re not on benefits, you won’t bring down the area with your company logo’d vehicle and somehow, the landlord seems ok with the fact you’ve procreated) they’re concerned that you managed to let your finances slip a few times in your adult life. Damn. After all the plate spinning, all the planning and mentally organising the floor plan for your new living room, it all comes down to a pesky store card you forgot about and that dodgy time in your life when you were in between jobs and your finances were out of your control.
With supply and demand being what it is, there are more potential renters than available properties and both the landlords and estate agents can be as picky as they want with who they let in. To be fair to the landlord, it’s their investment and they should want to safeguard it the best they know how; imagine what a Virgin Media van parked within the communal car park space would do to the potential selling prices? God forbid!
I’m frustrated but not beaten. Fortunately most of the factors which seem to be an instant barrier to renting don’t apply to me. But some do. Not the least the brown eyes* and having a child part. I can’t and wouldn’t want to change them nor want to rent from someone who felt that was a negative factor. Maybe it would be more helpful if potential renters and landlords had a sit down meeting and judged candidates on individual merit, rather than making sweeping assumptions about huge sections of the population.
I’ve been on housing benefits before in the past, many moons ago, after being made redundant and ploughing through all my savings. It didn’t make me less responsible with my rent or my bills. It didn’t make me into a bad person. Yet, if I were now looking for somewhere to rent now, I’d be stuck. 95% of the available homes in my area clearly state either “professionals only” or “sorry, no DSS” (erm, by the way, DSS hasn’t been a thing for many years, but yes, I understand what you mean!). People on housing benefits are seen by many, both landlords and members of the general population, as being drug taking, lazy alcoholics. In some cases, this may be true, but can’t the same be said for those private renters and home owners too? I knew of quite a few, non-benefit-claiming functioning alcoholics when I worked in finance.
At this rate, it will be easier to keep on saving and go straight into a mortgage, and that’s saying a lot, seeing as neither The King nor I are flush for cash! With so much going on in life, having to jump through hoops to find somewhere comfortable to live is frustrating, but in London and the surrounding areas, it’s the reality in which we live. Hopefully, sooner rather than later, we’ll find the perfect landlord-tenant-house marriage. Or, to be fair, we can always up sticks and move to Bali for sun, cheap rentals and a booming creative and tech community. Yup I have been looking…!
So what do you think? Was the process straight forward the last time you tried to move house? Are landlords / agencies right to blacklist parts of the population? Are you a landlord with a horror story about a tenant from hell? Come join the conversation.
*I haven’t seen an ad stating no brown eyes, just making that clear!!
Oh, less than that. At least one reference agency (and I’m sure they all charge similar rates) charged around £20 per tenant for basic referencing (which is all most agencies seem to do. The margin on contracts and referencing is why agencies try it on come rent review time – they have no vested interest in having you stay on, as they make more from reletting the property and only lose a relatively small amount of earnings if the property is empty for a month (it’s obviously far more catastrophic for the landlord, but landlords see an opportunity to gamble for more rent, so they’ll take the agent’s not-exactly-selfless-advice that they reckon they can get more).
One agent actually copped to the fact that eery year they just try adding £50 a week (claiming often nonexistent increases ‘in the area’) and see if the tenants will pay it.
Ha! Yes I’ve fallen foul to the £50 per week addition come rent review in the past! Everyone is out to make that little bit more money out of us, it seems.
The profit margin on the referencing is ludicrous and shouldn’t be allowed. I’ve been turned off applying to rent so many properties in the last few weeks purely because the agency in charge wanted anything up to £250 per tenant in fees.
Pretty sure housing benefit in at least some areas is paid to the tenant and not the landlord so provided you can pass the references without the income the housing benefit provides they don’t actually have any way to know you’re on HB unless you tell them.
The references the estate agent pays peanuts for (and charges you the earth for) aren’t really worth the paper they’re written on and due to data privacy laws there’s very little information they can actually find out about you beyond a basic credit check (and some don’t seem to always do that) without someone volunteering it.
Ultimately it’s none of their business how you raise the money to pay the rent. If you are honest with yourself about what you can afford with what money you have coming in and pay the rent on time they won’t come back to ask questions later… Until it’s time for the dreaded rent review.
Very very good points Phil, if you’ve got the deposit money and can pay the monthly rental that should be what’s most important.
I’ve seen some estate agents ask for upwards of £250+VAT per tenant to run reference checks. It can’t cost more than £50 in time and resources!
Having just gone through this nightmare myself I can absolutely emphasise. I found the perfect house and 2 weeks of waiting around for the landlord to make a decision, he decided he didn’t want anyone with children. Brilliant. Just brilliant. So I’ve compromised and gone with an ok house. As that was 2 months ago and I’ve struggled to find anything else since. It’s a demoralising and horrible process – I work hard but on a low salary so will most likely be entitled to housing benefit. But I’ve not investigated that in case it puts me at a disadvantage. Good luck as you continue your search – although I’d be seriously tempted by Bali too!
Oh isn’t it just horrid? We found our dream home too very recently, I was gutted when we were told we couldn’t have it. I actually cried. Had to pull myself away from social media and give myself room to refocus and I was so cut up. It really can be demoralising, you just summed it up perfectly. Bali is looking all the more tempting!!