Trying to rent

Brainer87

Evening all,

Just after some advice if possible,

My partner & I are currently renting a 2 bed flat from a friend, he has recently told us he is looking to sell. This isn't an issue, we always knew it would happen a some point.

The problem we have now is both our credit ratings/scores/reports are pretty bad, & unfortunately we both have a CCJ's against our names, I have 1, my partner has 3 I believe. The CCJ's are for parking fines (private parking company) & money being owed to a previous friend of ours.

We've been given a couple of months to find a new place, & we've already viewed a couple of properties. I'm not to stressed out at the moment but i can't help feeling that we will fail the reference checks after we've paid the fees to the letting agents. We can't really afford to fork out £400-£500 & not get anywhere. We've never missed a payment for rent & it has always been on time aswell, our current landlord & previous landlord can back this up aswell.

We've already spoken to a couple of agencies & they've told us as long as we are open, honest & transparent about it then it shouldn't be a problem. Most have said they will inform the landlord before carrying out the checks, & most of the time the landlord will decide whether they want to continue with us or not. Is this just them saying that to get our money, or should I not be so judgemental & jump to conclusions?!

I'm a little worried time will continue to go by without finding a place, or finding a place & being too worried to fork out the money for a referencing check incase we don't get accepted.

Does anyone have any advice with what to do, or has anyone else been in a similar situation & had success?

Many thanks in advance

Brainer87

dawyldthing

See if there’s any private landlords. They don’t all go through agencies and you’ll avoid the fees (you’ll still need a deposit though)

Brainer87

Thanks for the response,

Yeah we've tried looking for private LL's, although there doesn't seem to be many about at the minute which is a pain.

We do have a little bit of time to find a place, we just don't want to have to rush when the time does come

macman

You do not have to leave the current property just because the LL plans to sell it. Only a court order can evict you, and from start of proceedings to eviction will probably take at least 5 months. So far your LL does not even appear to have given you formal notice, so time is on your side.
Your LL may well be a friend, but you still have a legal tenancy that can only be ended by the proper means.

Cakeguts

I can tell you now that if you were looking to rent one of our properties the person with the one CCJ might be accepted if we knew what it was for and were satisfied that it wouldn't affect the mortgage but we wouldn't entertain someone with 3 CCJs because it would make us think that they didn't care about making sure payments were made.

Brainer87

Well our current LL has said he'll be enacting the break clause in our lease as of March, our break clause is set at 2 months. So in theory we have until May I guess.

Thanks Cakeguts, it's good to get the view from the other side, it's unfortunate but hopefully we'll find a LL who is quite laid back & takes our references over our credit rating

Comms69

Brainer87 wrote: »

Well our current LL has said he'll be enacting the break clause in our lease as of March, our break clause is set at 2 months. So in theory we have until May I guess.

Thanks Cakeguts, it's good to get the view from the other side, it's unfortunate but hopefully we'll find a LL who is quite laid back & takes our references over our credit rating

Eviction takes on avg 6-9 months....