Not sure of my moral obligation?

Mumto3cheekymonkeys

Hi all

Here I go

I am currently renting out my property to a gentleman with 2 children 16 and 17. They are in full time education and were homeless so I took pity on them and offered them my house with no upfront costs. I get housing benefit paid to me for the property how ever I am not sure is all is kosher. I do not believe he is struggling with money and I in fact believe he may be earning and living elsewhere and my house is just for his children while they study. We are now having to put the property up for sale as it is effecting our standard of living and stressing us out. In his tenancy agreement it states that he must keep in contact with us and allow us to enter the property including possible viewers as long as he is given 24 hours notice. He is being rather uncooperative and we are worried we wont be able to sell the house and get into debt.
He is not at the property for more then 4 days a week and is now away for what he told us was only a few days but is now weeks. His child has told me he is on holiday (how he can afford this I do not know) He has 2 cars worth well over £20000 while we are struggling. I am worried that if we inform housing benefit whether we would

1 loose the benefit and not be able to pay our mortgage (although we own atleast 40%)
2 not be able to evict him legally.


Please help.

Thrugelmir

Are you declaring the income to the tax authorities?

BitterAndTwisted

If you want to sell this property get shot of the tenant and evict him legally first before you [ut it on the market. While it's tenanted your only likely buyers will be cash ones.

If you grass up the tenant for housing benefit fraud and he's guilty the Council will be chasing you for all the back-rent you've received from them and not th tenant.

Why do you think that if you grass him up you won't be able to evict him legally? What length of AST was signed? You can't start the eviction process untill the AST has expired. Although you can issue a Section 21 Notice now signifying you intend to end the tenancy IF YOU HAVE REGISTERED THE TENANT"S DEPOSIT in one of the three schemes.

Mumto3cheekymonkeys

Most definitely. We have done 70% of it today and will finish the rest when we get our p60s.

Mumto3cheekymonkeys

BitterAndTwisted wrote: »

If you want to sell this property get shot of the tenant and evict him legally first before you [ut it on the market. While it's tenanted your only likely buyers will be cash ones.

If you grass up the tenant for housing benefit fraud and he's guilty the Council will be chasing you for all the back-rent you've received from them and not th tenant.

Why do you think that if you grass him up you won't be able to evict him legally? What length of AST was signed? You can't start the eviction process untill the AST has expired. Although you can issue a Section 21 Notice now signifying you intend to end the tenancy IF YOU HAVE REGISTERED THE TENANT"S DEPOSIT in one of the three schemes.

Thanks for your reply. We did not take a deposit as we had a tenant before pull out on short notice and we just needed it to be let out so offered it to the council. The property is being kept in a good order and his tenancy does not run out for another 4 months.
He was required to pay a months up-front which we have not yet received even though he has been in the property for 2 months, he is also required to give us a garentor who we have written to but still not heard from. We realised we had made a mistake taking no deposit but were desperate which is why we have now decided to sell. I have already spoken to a friend of mine who works for the council and has told me he is responsible for paying back the housing benefit we have received and not us.

many thanks.

BitterAndTwisted

Your friend who works for the council is wrong if you are receiving the rent direct from them and not from the tenant.

Let me get this straight: you let this bloke move into your property without taking a deposit, with no Deed signed by their guarantor and you did not receive the first month's rent?

Do you realise what an unholy mess you are in? The guarantor will never sign anything now this tenant is in situ. You've taken no deposit but he's got two teenage kids living there while he's mostly absent. And he owed you money from the very moment he moved in. I don't suppose you credit-checked him or took any references either, did you?

Just get that bloody Section 21 Notice drawn up and served NOW. You need help to do this so I suggest you join a landlords association right away.

Get saving because you are most likely going to need a decent sum set aside before this is over.

agrinnall

And to add to what B&T said in his first post, it seems unlikely that the tenant will comply with your requests to allow viewings (in theory they should, but there's very little you can do about it if they don't), and even if they did the only people who might want to buy while a tenant is in place are professional landlords, who will not offer you anything like what you can hope for with vacant posession.

Mumto3cheekymonkeys

We are aware of the awful mess which is why we have decided to sell unfortunately we wanted to keep hold of the property for sentimental reasons (my partners family have lived there since it was built) but we needed more space so was advised to rent it out and buy bigger. All was ok but when our last tenent was difficult it started doubts in our head. We needed to fill it quickly so that we could get some money as we were still paying the remortgage which we couldn't afford (which is why we have decided to sell as we dont want to be depending on other people).
Im not sure what proof I would need to evict him, he is very smart and we dont want to end up in a lawsuit.

Mumto3cheekymonkeys

And we did credit check him which came up fine and his previous refrences (from homeless hostels) were good.

pmlindyloo

Mumto3cheekymonkeys wrote: »

Thanks for your reply. We did not take a deposit as we had a tenant before pull out on short notice and we just needed it to be let out so offered it to the council. The property is being kept in a good order and his tenancy does not run out for another 4 months.
He was required to pay a months up-front which we have not yet received even though he has been in the property for 2 months, he is also required to give us a garentor who we have written to but still not heard from. We realised we had made a mistake taking no deposit but were desperate which is why we have now decided to sell. I have already spoken to a friend of mine who works for the council and has told me he is responsible for paying back the housing benefit we have received and not us.

many thanks.

What do you mean by this? Do you mean you offered it to someone on HB or have you got some special arrangement/agreement with the council?

poppysarah

BitterAndTwisted wrote: »

If you grass up the tenant for housing benefit fraud and he's guilty the Council will be chasing you for all the back-rent you've received from them and not th tenant.

Only if the rent has been paid to the landlord.
If the tenant's had it and passed it on them it's nothing to do with the LL.