Will Most Agencies Accept 6-Months Rent Upfront Instead of Needing A Guarantor If Not Working?

Cakeguts

The problem is that people tell lies to rent houses that they can't afford. Unfortunately it is extremely difficult to tell the difference between someone who is telling the truth and someone who is very good at lying.



This is what happened to us. Couple say they have separated. Husband rents our nice 3 bed house in a good location on the basis that he has a good job can afford it passes all the checks and wants a house suitable for his children to stay in at weekends.
No large sum of rent paid up front but monthly rent. After about 2 months he announces that his mother is ill and he needs to go and stay with her to look after her. However in order to make sure that the house is still looked after his wife who he is separated from is willing to stay there and look after it. Can we give permission for that. Well she is still his wife they are not yet divorced so even if we don't give permission they are still going to be able to do it. So we gave permission.



About 2 weeks after this the letting agents get a phone call from the housing benefit department of the local council asking who the actual tenant of the property is because the wife has been there trying to claim housing benefit for a house where she isn't named on the tenancy agreement. The housing benefit claim was refused. The rent was around £200 more per month than the LHA. The letting agents on our behalf served notice on the tenant to leave at the end of the 6 months and luckily they just went probably because their little scheme hadn't gone to plan because of the professionalism of the housing benefit department of the council looking out for potential fraud.


This is why landlords appear to be so against renting to anyone who doesn't fit the normal working criteria because even if you do that you can end up with a problem. That problem that we had could have cost us £1000s if the tenant hadn't vacated at the end of the 6 months contract. What you don't want to do as a landlord is increase the risk of something going wrong right from the start.


Letting property is a business and no business person want to set out knowing that they are likely to make a thumping great loss so what they do is try to reduce the risk of that happening.