Housing benefit question

liz-paul

Hello all!
I will try to keep this brief:
My mum will almost certainly have to sell her house in the fairly near future (2 yrs mx I think) & will end up with next to no money from it & have to move into rented accommodation that will be paid for by NIHE (hopefully) as she is retired & living on state pension.
Unrelated to this we have been considering buying a place to let as an investment. If we were letting a place would NIHE pay out housing benefit for my mum to rent from a relative (i.e. me) or would they deem that to be fraudulent or something? It would seem to make sense to me if we could do it as my mum is renting from someone she trusts & we are renting to someone we trust.
If we did buy a place as an investment there is sadly no way we could afford to let my mum live there rent free.

Any help is greatly appreciate as I'm not having much luck looking around the web. Thanks

Golden_Anemone

Your post would get more replies in the Benefits section liz-paul but the answer is no, NIHE will not knowingly pay Housing Benefit to a landlord who is a close relative.

liz-paul

Thanks, I thought about that except that so many things are different in NI from England I thought it might be better here.

donnac2558

Reading the benefits forum, I found out you cannot rent from a relative and get the rent paid for you.

ballyblack

"Are you related to the Tenant" ?

is one of the first questions on the Landlord form

Pretani

A relative of mine does this and has done so for nearly 10 yrs. The son-in-law owns the house and the mother-in-law rents it from him and the housing exe pays for it.

donnac2558

Pretani wrote: »

A relative of mine does this and has done so for nearly 10 yrs. The son-in-law owns the house and the mother-in-law rents it from him and the housing exe pays for it.

But they are not blood related which is different.

You cannot rent from a mother,father,brother,sister,son,daughter, aunt or uncle and get your rent paid.

ooo000ooo

An acquaintence of mine did this for years, bought a house with his fathers name as the owner then rented it off him with the housing benefit paid to his father. both of them even had the same name and it was never queried. They even got a huge grant to renovate the property.

facingthefuture

You CAN get rent in this instance as long as the person/relative that owns the house does not live there.

Please confirm this with the housing benefit for I have applied to do EXACTLY that and one person on the phone said we couldn't and then the supervisor came on and confirmed it is FINE!!!!

My parents own the house we are living in, we applied and declared the relationship, no problem. My parents live 13 miles away.

liz-paul

Thank you for all the replies. The only thing we found online said that you can't claim if you live with your landlord & they are a relative. I think I will ask in CAB when I get a chance. Will let you know the response....

liz-paul

Sorry to drag this back but I spoke to NIHE's housing benefit department today & they said they will pay housing benefit if the tennants landlord is a family member as long as the tennant does not live with the landlord. Hope this clears things up.....