Renting after Discharge

lifebeginsagain

Just wondering if anyone has experience of renting during the 6 years post bankruptcy period?

We were already in a rented home when we went BR (Apr 2009) with no arrears or late payments with the rent or any of the utilities. We have lived here for 7 years now.

We are very keen to move as we have totally outgrown the house and have 6 months rent that we can pay upfront and references. However I have started to investigate with agencies and have been told we will also need a guarantor so the landlord can take the insurance that will cover them for non-payment of rent if we don't leave after the 6 months. None of our family know about our BR and our parents are retired so we don't have someone that we could or would want to ask to be a guarantor.

Anyone have any advice or experience they can share?

Worcsman

Yep. Not all agencies will insist on a guatrantor though. We were in rented in prep for our BR. I told our new landlord and he couldnt have cared less.

For our next move, some agencies I spoke to just stone walled me. They wont deal with BR's. Others would but insisted on all the rent up front plus the deposit which we eventually did. Our (hopefully) last move for many years, we were lucky enough to find a private landlord, no credit check no agency, nothing. I didnt hide my history from him but he knew our first landlord and his word was good enough.

Insurance for landlords regarding discharged bankrupts is a joke. I wonder what the stats say about how many BR's stop paying rent versus non BR's.

Its just another way that the financial system feels it can get some payback

lifebeginsagain

Thank you for the reply. Think we will have to shop around with agencies and hope one will consider us or our current agent gets something suitable on their books (they are a small estate agent so don't often have much on their books). It's madness like you say as we can pay rent and deposit up front, have no debt, my husband earns a very good salary but it's now all because of this insurance rubbish:mad:

We would be happy to privately rent it's just finding somewhere, I've looked on gumtree and friday-ad .... any other suggestions? we are in the south of England.

Worcsman

I dont know anything specific about renting in any other area than this one. I found gumtree of no use. The search facility was so far as I could see, pretty much useless unless you were in a major city.

Some places to look that will have private rentals are rural areas where the rich farmers have land and property knocking about. Try looking in village shop windows at the clasified ads. Orleaving wanted cards in rural boozers. If you want to live in a town or city then Im guessing your options will be limited to the agencies or the shark landlords that are hapy to take your cash and expect you to live in mould and damp. But as I said some will not bother with the credit check if you can pay all up front and the LL is OK with that. Its a fair lump of money so most ought to be interested. Just make sure that the LL has received all the cash up front and the agency arent banking it and not telling him.