Hello
I am relocating from Manchester to London for work purposes. I have a secure job and have managed to secure a transfer to another unit in London. My husband is a bus driver so he has just been offered a job with stage coach , whom he currently works for in Manchester .
We have excellent current landlord reference , employment references , savings and will pass the income test for rent.
The only thing holding us back is a CCJ - which I appreciate is a huge thing and will impact landlords insurance.
The CCJ is in relation to a personal loan that I took out for private medical treatment (operation)… and got into difficulty paying this back. Circumstances are different and I am paying this back now and have been for many months. The loan amount was £5k however due to interest increase to £8k.
We have a guarantor available for if we find a property that’ll rent to us .
How can I enter negotiations with landlords? I can truly appreciate their hesitation to rent their property to someone with poor credit history, after all it’ll be worth a considerable amount of money and quite rightly they want to protect and minimise risk .
We have never missed a rent payment ever…but that goes without saying so cannot use this as a positive…
we are looking for a long term let and have until end of august to find somewhere …
2 bed property within 10 mile radius of Wimbledon.
Any ideas to help negotiate with landlords?
Thanks
The CCJ might not be an issue if you explain the situations to your landlord.
Our current tenants have 5 CCJs plus a few which had been paid and it certainly rang alarm bells with us. But, they had ample income to cover the rent, secure professional jobs and we gave them the benefit of the doubt. They have been model tenants - actually the best we’ve had.
We don’t know what the CCJs were for but they had ample earnings to pay them all several times over. We would have appreciated some insight but took it as being their personal business and guessed there might be a dispute over them which is making them unwilling to pay. We’ll never know.
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Hello
Thank you so much for replying - that’s certainly put my mind at ease.
I most certainly am open and honest with landlords right from the start .
I enquired with a few letting agency’s however some I didn’t hear back from once I declared adverse credit and another said that they wouldn’t be able to accept my application .
I will continue to reach out and see if there are any who will accept me.
Just out of curiosity, was your tenants vetted via open rent and then they decided, or was it private ?
Thanks again
Hi Nicola, we once took tenants, both with small, historic ccjs, and they were excellent. Important to note, we dont take landlord insurance, which might be invalidated, we rented via OpenRent, whereas a high st agent might have filtered out such applications, the tenants fully disclosed, showing good affordability, before paying a holding deposit ( note that if this is only revealed at reference, after paying a holding deposit, this might be grounds for landlord withholding the holding deposit), finally, they came across as sensible honest people who had learnt from past mistakes, as you do.
Hope this helps.
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Hi Richard, this has just happened to me. I thought I had found model tenants (and they may well still be) we’ve had plenty of conversations and viewing, I’ve just done their referencing and they have both failed, due to active CCJ’s that are 4 and 5 years old seperately and not mentioned this to me, I’m absolutely floored, why they weren’t honest or upfront about these. I’ve paid £40 for their references, am I entitled to deduct this amount from their holding deposit?
Hi Sophie,
The gov guidance to the tenant fees act states " A holding deposit can be retained where a tenant: • provides false or misleading information… " Did they give false information?
My point earlier was that we landlords should be accepting that we all make mistakes, some result in ccjs, and if your applicants pass affordability checks, including paying off past debts, and seem to have learnt from past mistakes, give them a chance!
You have to be able to evidence that they lied to you. Did they complete an application form thst asked this question?
Wait until they decide they are leaving and stop paying the rent, they already have 5 ccj so do you think they care.
Whatever is coming your way you will regret.
As long as there are LL that will take these people on they will keep defaulting, but not with me as I wont touch them.
Dont deduct, keep the lot. Loss of time equals loss of rent.
If you can prove what you say and your previous LL will back you up, that is good info.Being a LL I would accept you with a guarantor.
Some people have a funny notion about guarantors, the Guarantor has to have assetts, no good having a guarantor that has nothing.
Hi Richard, in the end I just deducted the reference fees and gave them the rest of their hold deposit back, I didn’t want to be difficult, they were a really nice couple, it’s just a shame they weren’t transparent with me.
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No problem at all with our tenants. They have correctly given notice and are leaving at the weekend having paid their final rent payment and when we inspected the house last week, it was immaculate. There is still the deposit to fall back on if we find anything at the end of tenancy inspection but the 5CCJs have not been an issue for us at all.
Of course, it raised eyebrows when we saw how many there were but we did affordability checks and took landlord references (double-checked) along with employer references. In our case, the CCJs probably related to disputes elsewhere which they could have easily afforded so we classed this as none of our business. However, we would always be cautious.
We took up references and credit checks etc on the intended successor tenants who passed easily on income but when we checked bank statements, these told a different story and we had to reject them (and lose the £40 paid for referencing).
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