Impending eviction :s

christabell

Miss Cat
Just popping on here to offer my good wishes to you

neas

One thing i understand now is when my local adverts for housing say "No DSS".

I never got that.. guess its because you run a higher risk of eviction/arrears .. but i dont think damage anyways.

So if you have a bad property... then you rent it to DSS? that would make more sense... and hence why property has problems with it.

The OP cant find anywhere for sensible rent... so perhaps she was already paying a reduced rate for a 'poor quality' house/flat. Just my thoughts... migth be wrong.

Miss_Cat

neas wrote: »

What happens when you become arrears in rent to a private landlord?

Does that money get reinbursed by the council? Or does the landlord loose hundreds if not thousands of pounds?.. Surely this couldn't happen otherwise no landlord would take a housing tenant.. because they are risky..

In business if something is higher risk you associate more cost to it.. i.e the rent 'would' be more... But obviously housing tenants cannot afford more for the going rate.. so wouldnt it be a bad idea to take a housing tenant if they are more risky?

Sorry to hijack thread.. just a general theme i see on these boards. People are in the crap.. i agree but always the landlord is seen as an independant entity who can afford to loose the rent arrears..

Nobody these days seems to be able to afford loosing rental income or money at all... Was just wondering if the landlord could claim the rent back from the council or the tenant who has left. Or maybe the landlord hjas to sell because no rental income means he got behind on the mortgage and thus.. now is force to sell.. that would be ironic :P.

Kinda like a self fulfilling prophecy... Tenant fails to pay rent for a few months... landlord falls behind on mortgage gets charged thousands of pounds ... can only sell house to stop himself going bankrupt.. ironic but maybe true?

im sorry but i really dont know on this...
i have never actually met the LL, but the way i see him is as a man running a business.
i have every symapathy for him not making his money, and i have every symapathy for our letting agents. they have a job to do and they are doing it and at the end of the day we have not kept up our end of the bargain by paying rent at the rate we should and when we should. I personally see this as a result of events beyond our control, however.
i feel no animosity toward our LL, and dont see him as [EMAIL="tw@t"]!!!!!![/EMAIL] as i know other LL can be (MOT's LL for example).
from what i can gather...although i am PROBABLY wrong on this so dont take it at face value, the LL has gone through the lettiing agents to rent this property... as far as i know he gets his money from the letting agents regardless and it is them that are losing money...but as i said i am probably wrong on this as i dont know which service he is getting from them.
I also believe that the money he has lost is to be reclaimed from us, in the form of lost deposit and the remains of the account being passed to debt collectors. so either way he eventually gets it.

Miss_Cat

rayday2 wrote: »

Not sure if anyone else has asked but do you have loans, credit cards or catalogues? If you do you need to give these token payments so that you can afford rent.

i do, but have not paid anything to any for almost 2yrs:eek:
to put it this way, i am in almost enough debt to go bankrupt, the only reason i cant is that some of my debt is council tax from a previous home.
we pay the bills we need eg food, electric, c/tax, gas,phone, clothing/shoes/other kids things and what rent we can when we can.
i currently have bailiffs on my case for an overpayment of tax credits (which irks me as it wasnt an overpayment at all but thats a whole other story.) and council tax for previous property...but its hard to tell a bailiff who is at your door ready to take stuff away that you cant pay as it's a "non-priority debt" lol. and the last time i made an offer of repayment to the council tax bailiff he said "ok we can do that, i just need to take a 'good-will' payment of £200 with me now" which i blatently couldn't do so i slammed the door in his face. so they sent that one back to court.
right now i couldnt give a flying cuckoo for any of my debts i just need to sort out the housing issue first. but thanku for the suggestion

rayday2

Your landlord will not get any money from the letting agent they pass on to the landlord what you pay, so you pass on nothing he gets nothing which if he has a mortgage on the property hurts!

The letting agent also only get a % of what you pay and they pass onto the LL - so they are losing out too.

vivatifosi

Hi Miss Cat,

Just wanted to send you a hug and wish you good luck. I don't have anything to add on the eviction, but did want to talk about the condition of the house. Can I please suggest that you put together an evidence file about this? You should put in it:

Photos of damp, including pictures of clothes and anything else that was ruined, any reports from Environmental Health, your diary showing all the dates people were round repairing the boiler, plus any notes that you made at the time, etc.

Whatever happens, you will have everything you need together in one place, plus some of it you may not have yet (eg pictures of damp) and will not have access to once you've moved. That way if ever you need it in court, or to counter your landlord or whatever, you will have it. Hopefully you never will need it, but evidence is a powerful thing.

I hope that made sense. I'm still at work and realised I'm rambling...

Good luck, and hugs....

Miss_Cat

rayday2 wrote: »

Landlords can only get insurance against rent arrears if proper credit checks are done and passed - hence it can be getting harder to rent privately.

If someone signed a contract happy with the condition of the property it cannot be reduced thats the point of a contract and inspection process.

Did the OP have the council round to inspect the property before giving housing benefit? If they did then the council OK'd the state the property too.

Most of the condition of the property deteriorated AFTER we signed the contract as a result of them hiring a non corgi registered plumber to move the gas boiler, and when the building next door was demolished that was when water started coming down the wall and mould started growing, so yes we signed the contract when the property was in a good condition. as for the smoke damage i dont know how bad it is, personally i wouldn't have thought that charcoal skirting boards were a good thing, but the environmental health man and the lady from the rent service both looked confused when shown it and said no more. if you will giv me a couple of hours i will put up links to pictures of the problems and if you chose to look at them you can decide for yourselves.

rayday2

http://www.hse.gov.uk/gas/domestic/faqtenant.htm Those are the tenant rights re CORGI gas etc not sure if you have followed anything up re them not sending a CORGI engineer.

Most LL let the agents arrange repairs it should be in your tenancy agreement whether the landlord or agents were responsible for the choice of gas man. One quick way of knowing is, if something goes wrong do your ring your landlord or the agents - if you ring the agents do they sort it out right away or do they say we will have to contact your landlord.

Miss_Cat

ok so here's how my day has gone.
got up, got dressed, fed kids, made sure they were dressed, wrote out email to letting agents, got ready for work, left for work, realised it was pouring, came home got coat, ran to work, missed 2 busses, was late for work, listenend to abusive people for 4 hours while sitting in wet shoes, wnet to council (was nearly sick) sat for an hour, made sure housing benefit was sorted (it's been suspended as they want written proof that a national savings account has been closed, --one that's been closed for about 5 yrs lol) phoned OH to get him to phone them up and get a letter sent out to him. went to see housing officer. asked to see any housing officer BUT the one we've been allocated. was refused. waited while assistant gossiped on phone. waited for my allocated HO to answer phone. HO refused to see me. (she did however say that i should go to the court TODAY to apply for a stay on the eviction)made appt to see her on friday morning. legged it home to get money and forms needed. legged it back to the court office. paid for order to go ahead (apparently we will get a hearing and will get a letter in the post telling us when this will be. dont know if this will effect it going to the bailiff or if that will go ahead as scheduled)
went to the shop to get stuff for tea and kids lunch boxes tomorrow. got home. read, and re-wrote OH's letter to national savings asking for proof (he rang and they told him that he would have to write to them. hope it will get here before friday or HO will throw a fit.)
tidied up, put tea on, got two quotes from storage companies (does not include removals, but is a lot cheaper than i thought it would be)
fed kids, came on here. dont think ive done all i was going to do have i? hang on i'll look at the list i wrote yesterday...
that's right, ive got to give the kids a bath, get school stuff readym get them in bed, phone shelter...i think they're still open...contact the local youth hostel by email and go on cab website and see if i can get appt to see someone or if its drop in. if its drop in i've somehow got to convince my boss to give me wednesday AND friday off work, without getting my final warning.
im tired but i haven't got everything done today that i wanted to do

RAS

Miss_Cat wrote: »

to put it this way, i am in almost enough debt to go bankrupt, the only reason i cant is that some of my debt is council tax from a previous home.

Miss Cat

To go Bk, you need to have a minimum of £750 debt. It would cost you half that in fees.

I think that the old CT and the rent would be covered.

It is not as if not going Bk would help you retain the house.

It might be an idea to post on the BK forum?