So you happy to apply preconceived stereotype prejudices after all?
This isn’t knowing someone.
The best conmen are well spoken.
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But why landlords get bad tenants is using numbers and data and not going on old fashioned principles of personability , taking a view, keeping a relationship with the tenant and similar reasons. Because when a landlord does good things, so does a tenant, or vice versa.
It’s because landlords see it as taking money from tenants and that it’s just business and transactional and paying the mortgage (without it being the tenants home) in the context of not forming good reciprocal relations, where I think relations with tenants goes wrong or where landlords don’t get the right tenants to start with. Landlords who don’t do that probably experience more bad tenants
Of course a bank can email them with permission or they can provide a staff number and name to check that’s what the bank employee saw or printed. Common sense.
As already said, you have zero idea of landlords entire financial picture to be able to make this judgement. And likewise quite frankly it’s none of a tenants or anyone else’s businesses.
This isn’t practical. I have about 100 applicants within 2 weeks or so. They all present themselves as butter wouldn’t melt. Stats say those on low income are much more likely to default on rent. (Benefits most likely, then low income). How does a landlord decide? Where is the sense in picking a higher risk tenant? I pick people in certain job types over another. The landscape is never “fair”.
Previous landlord references are typically worthless.
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Anecdotally, I have had much worse experience with UC or DLA tenants than any other group. I have seen the pattern enough to know it’s not a coincidence.
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I’m sorry, I have to say you seem to have a very different view of the rental market than what is actually reality.
I use OpenRent for my property because I prefer to meet prospective tenants. When we have 50 tenants applying for a property that all seem pretty similar, it’s well worth meeting them but as I’ve said, people have a knack of saying what they think you want to hear or acting like in a way that will make them look good. It’s sometimes difficult to see through the BS.
I am always very prompt to fix something if it goes wrong. I generally have a trades person at the property the same day something is reported, even if just to assess what needs doing. That hasn’t stopped one particular tenant from (an educated suspicion noted by said tradespeople) intentionally breaking things purely to cost me money. This is a tenant that seemed perfect from our initial meeting but it certainly doesn’t follow your assumption that ‘when a landlord does good things so does a tenant’. Ok we get the rent every month but that’s no good when they cost us near £6,000 in ‘repairs’ within the first two months.
Again, I’m not sure that quite matches reality. I’d challenge you to ask your bank to email your bank statements to a prospective landlord and see how far that gets you.
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Just picking up on this, I specifically state I don’t want their current landlord as a reference, I want their previous landlord as they have no vested interest in getting a bad tenant out of their house.
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Run and run and run Goodbye all
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There is no discrimination when it comes to finances and risks. I rejected tenants in the past who wanted to pay year in advance. For me this is nothing but pushing the risk to a later date. It might feel personal but it is not and do not let this get to you. This is simply business.
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It’s just going to make me homeless in all probability and it’s making me unwell at present.
Please don’t discriminate against people - it’s outlawed in that case and will be under the RRA
Have you looked at house shares or lowering standards?
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All this does is allow landlords to essentially eliminate universal credit tenants under this cloak of affordability, who may be a much better risk then those who are earning more and you never know a persons financial situation who is working in a full time job and gets into debt / looses job etc. In fact if anything universal credit comes with guarantees - it does with me whilst I’m making a go of a business in a 12 month universal credit start up period.
If insurers or mortgage advisers say x30 and that wipes out most universal credit tenants ability to get accommodation then in the interests of society and the government policies and laws like The 2010 Equality Act, it will essentially be a policy of discrimination against UC and housing benefit tenants as case law will likely be coming and it won’t be on landlords to set affordability requirements as the fox looking over the chickens. It will be the lion government overlooking all of us and tbh bring it on, considering I’ve been able to afford housing on a lower salary and how frugally I live is my prerogative. X20 or x25 and/or with proper guarantor practises seem sensible.
In the Renter Rights Bill 281 Clause 40 it clarifies:
that no provision of Chapter 3 prevents landlords or anyone acting on their
behalf from considering the income of a prospective tenant when undertaking affordability
checks before letting a property under a relevant tenancy.
The bill wants to reduce guarantor liability to just 6 months rent. Even worse for higher risk tenants, forces landlords to only accept the cream even moreso.
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Imagine you are a landlord processing new applications, just 2 tenants remain. Everything is equal except tenant A has been self employed for 6 months and tenant B has been employed by the same company for the last 10 years.
Stats tell us that most new businesses fail.
Who would you pick?
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Looking at years of historical bank statements and credit history presents a good understanding. Length of time with current employer. Gaps between employment. Savings. Job type. It’s easy to build a picture.
There is a direct link between amount of disposable income and likelihood of defaulting.
Am I missing something here?
You are saying legislation is coming to stop selection based on income, but then have copied a section of the RRB which confirms that it will not stop Landlords from considering income when checking affordability.
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My thoughts exactly.
Thanks for that. Are you a landlord yourself? I used to work in insurance.
My landlord at the moment will have buildings insurance on the building but he won’t necessarily need to have landlord cover as I’m a reliable tenant.
If a landlord takes out rent cover then I can see a warranty might be in the policy that states that the tenant needs to be on 30x earnings, which is condition precedent to policy response otherwise the insurer couldn’t insure rent.
However this is at odds with this case law decision that landlords cannot discriminate against housing benefit tenants because people claiming housing benefit will be way below £30,500
see No DSS: Landmark court ruling confirms housing benefit discrimination is unlawful - Shelter - Shelter England
Then it’s a question of well why don’t I rent something cheaper - answer there isn’t anything cheaper for small flats in this area.
I’m really surprised that you would post where you are blatantly indicating you breach the legislation and discrimination laws like the equality act 2010 as with your post about not allowing tenants with dogs which is almost certainly going to be unlawful too with the impending change to the RRA.
This is because you are making this way to a simplistic a calculation. You don’t recognise two people won’t be the same all things being equal. All have different situations and if someone is on £20k with universal credit like me and can still afford the property and has a history of 20 years paying, I would not discriminate against such tenants if I was a landlord and they came to me first, not least I have been discriminated against too many times with my PTSD I suffer from. I would simply look at ability to pay and I wouldn’t form prejudices against them as you clearly are.
If I was a landlord I’d balance affordability and history with their situation and I’d be even more inclined to rent to universal credit tenants who can assuredly pay. It all depends on the situation - impending job offer, how long can they be on universal credit, can uc be paid direct etc, what they do - for instance my sister claims long term benefits and is a teaching assistant with kids and she is one of the best risks anyone could have. How can someone be more responsible other than working in a school? Do they work at the same time and the total income assures affordability backed up with what happened to them in the past and what they have done in the past.
Also not having the money is no indication of defaulting if people just move out due to affordability and you can expect gaps between tenants as a landlord. What of the relations and their willingness to help.
What your post also strikes off in mentioning everything being equal save for employment type status is that you aren’t willing to form relations with your tenants to the extent you want to see them as people and to get on with so the tenancy goes well. If you pick people just on their employment type status and refuse to look at all the other factors around what type of people they are and people you could likely get on with, then if you are not picking a tenant when you harbour things like ‘get a house yourself if you want a dog’ as you said in another post, when you’ve no idea about the dog and behaviour, you are immediately setting yourself up for problems as a landlord in relationships. That’s because your role in getting on with them and keeping them happy per the rights they have is just as equal as their role in looking after your property. If you don’t do that and you’ve had bad relationships with tenants or they have done things badly, I can’t say I’m surprised why that’s happened.
As the case law has outlawed discrimination against UC tenants but landlords then set the bar high in salary requirements knowing it will preclude universal credit tenants, as a workaround, case law will happen that makes this unlawful too simply because it’s against public policy (in an era of housing shortage) to refuse renters who can afford homes. It’s a very basic point the government has power to sort and the landlords don’t get to set affordability when x30 income is obviously too high if people want to live frugally.
I do understand landlords position but you don’t get to say someone can’t afford a property on x20 income, yet they have rented for some time doing so. Ability to rent is based on all the circumstances of the case, not pre defined discriminatory factors.
The bar is not set high to preclude benefits claimants. The affordability rate is set to preclude people with a lower income than that considered to make the rental affordable.
& that test case has nothing to do with decisions based on affordability. That restricts the use of No-DSS clauses, and I have no problem with that.
However, this said, we are not getting anywhere her, so I’m not muting this chat before I get sucked into more pointless speculative back & forth.
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I am amazed that someone who has worked in insurance, who’s VERY NATURE it is to simplistically discriminate and penalise some people over another and often to totally reject high risk individuals, is unable to comprehend why landlords do the same thing! The irony.
Let’s just put all names into a hat shall we?
Incidentally, no breach of equalities act in the example you are referring to. Also, it’s impossible to be in breach of an act which does not exist yet.