Agent wants to know salary for contract

3card

The chances are you and your flatmate will be joint and severally responsible for the rent so the agents will need to make sure you can pay the rent on your own in the event of your flatmate leaving.

Isn't that pretty much common sense??

Rambosmum

As 3card has sad. You both need to be able to pay the full rent as a rule, so that they can go after either of you should you fail to pay.

Tell them or don't, but if you don't they won't rent to you. And it's very unlikely that you will find anyone who will. The fact they only want your salary is actually quite unusual, most want a payslip or bank statement to confirm it.

You may not like talking about money but in some instances you have to. This is one of them. Others include having a life partner, putting an offer in to buy a house and a mortgage application. You of course can choose not to give that information in those circumstances too, but you can also expect that you won't get the outcome you want then either.

They can choose not to rent a property to anyone for any reason, not being sure that a tenant can pay the rent seems a good one to me!

macman

I hope you are not planning on buying a car or anything else on finance, getting a bank account, or a credit card? It's a logical and standard question for prospective lenders.
If you've only been asked to state your salary, rather than prove it by supplying payslips, then you can of course give them any figure you want to...
Prevaricate and they may let it to another tenant.

cybervic

vejebolud wrote: »

So apparently I have only one choice. Thanks all!

If you can pay 6/12 month rent in advance, and/or have a high salary guarantor, they might not need to know how much you earn.

saajan_12

vejebolud wrote: »

They have the full reference from my employer. The only missing detail is the salary, because I don't like giving it out. Plus the other flatmate has provided it and it covers it all anyway

Has your employer stated your salary in their reference? If yes then whats the issue in repeating it? If no then the reference may help as a character reference but is meaningless for affordability calcs. You may not like giving salary info, they don't like letting to people who the can't verify can cover it.

vejebolud wrote: »

Is it lawful? Or can I just state that I don't want to declare it and is there some law to back me up?

The other person already fulfills this. I mean, we work for two huge firms everybody knows and the salaries are well-known too..

Of course you can state you don't want to declare it. The laws about not being able to steal your payslips or torture you to give up your salary info would back you up.

However they don't have to let to you..

Knowing your firm doesn't mean anything.. you could be the office cleaner or the big fancy banker. Would you be happy with committing to a house if you could google the developer and see what their houses generally look like? No, you'd want to view that house, just like the LL/agent would want to know your specific salary.

I think its time to put on big boy/girl trousers and learn when you do / don't have to talk about money etc.

Slinky

Who knows, one day you may find yourself renting out a property you own to someone else. Would you expect in those circumstances to ask them what their salary is?


As far as it being a strange British thing, I can't imagine there are many places in the world where you rent and are not asked this question.