Rent allowance not accepted

BrickFist

Hi guys

Is it just me or are there other people out there who are having major problems finding places to rent on rent allowance ?

I currently live in a one bedroom apartment in Tallaght but am desperately looking to move into a two bed in the area. The reason for the move is because we are a family of three who have grown out of the current apartment and need an extra room for the little one.

But every single listing i contact the answer is always the same "No rent allowance accepted" Why is that ? I am a great tenant who always pays his rent on time and never gave any landlords problems, i have plenty of references to back that up but it doesn't seem to make any difference, once i say the words rent allowance the landlords or estate agents basically end the conversation.

I really need to find a place before Oct 1 or I'll have to sign a new lease which is the last thing i want to do, so what exactly is the big problem with RA and why wont LL's and agents accept it ?

Mrs OBumble

It's not just you, happens all over the country.

Try contacting the council, and asking if there's any chance of a RAS property.

djimi

BrickFist wrote: »

I really need to find a place before Oct 1 or I'll have to sign a new lease which is the last thing i want to do

As a tenant you never have to sign a new lease, and there is nothing that a landlord can do to force you to sign a lease.

One thing that might go against you though is that the landlord could issue a termination notice on the grounds that the property is no longer suitable for the needs of the tenant (ie a family of three living in a one bed apartment). I would have thought that to be unlikely though.

hfallada

A landlord is a business person. Therefore he/she selects who will pay the most rent and most likely respect the property. Rent allowance is meeting market rates at the moment in Dublin( not because of lack of repossessions as most people say, but their is huge amount of english language students in the city, more people are living in Dublin, plus most pre 63s are off the market). But there has been no increase in supply.

A LL wants a tenant who will respect the property and pay on time. A lot of professional tenants do exactly that. But a few rent allowance tenants have tarnished the reputation of everyone else on RA.

OP I wouldnt sign a new lease with your LL, but keep looking and eventually when you have found something. Then give your 30 days notice

Cuddlesworth

BrickFist wrote: »

I really need to find a place before Oct 1 or I'll have to sign a new lease which is the last thing i want to do, so what exactly is the big problem with RA and why wont LL's and agents accept it ?

Rent allowance isn't accepted because there is a far greater risk of non payment, eviction proceedings and property damage. And the chance is much higher then you would think.

Plenty of boom time landlords are learning that.

fussyonion

OP, I've been in your situation and I know you're frustrated but you must look at it from a Landlord's point of view.

Every year the Rent Allowance is reviewed and 9 times out of 10, the allowance is reduced; you're then asked to request your LL to reduce the rent in order for you to be able to continue receiving RA.

This isn't fair on the LL.

Why should he reduce his rent just to suit you when he can get a professional tenant in, who'll pay the requested rent every month, with no issues.

I had to bring the Rent Review form to my LL every year and every year I had to ask him to reduce the rent.

I was humiliated and embarrassed and I completely took my LL's side. I didn't think it was fair on him and I always said if I was a LL, I would avoid RA tenants like the plague.

You have to look at it from the LL's side-he's usually the one out of pocket.

Devi

I think its two issues affecting your situation OP. One is the issue of supply and demand, right now in Dublin there is a serious lack of supply of houses for sale and rent so LL’s have their pick of tenants and as one poster said earlier they would rather not have RA recipients. The other issue is that due to austerity the government is lowering RA maximum rent limits (I know some have gone up since June but the general trend is downward as it is less political damaging then direct cuts to social welfare), which further decreases the pool of available housing.

So IMO you have three options OP. One, stay where you are. Two, move to a county that supply is greater/demand less. Three, try and gain employment and take control of where you live.

BrickFist

Thanks for the reply's guys.

I'm wondering why Landlords think there's more chance of an RA recipient not paying rent in time than a professional ? I would think there is more of a guarantee of payment from RA's seen as the social welfare make the payment specifically for rent and it can be paid direct to the LL were as a working man could possible lose his job and take a while to find a new one. As well as that the social welfare check bank statements every six months to make sure the rent is being paid and if an RA recipient wants to move home and keep receiving payments they have to bring forward the deposit from the last place to show that they took care of it.

Also allot of rent limits have been raised recently, for a family of three in Dublin the maximum rent limit is 950 per month. There are plenty of properties available to let for that price and under but again none are accepting RA. I have never had to go to my LL and ask him to lower the rent but i suppose when cuts happen that's what allot of people have to do.

Its just a maddening situation.

athtrasna

BrickFist wrote: »

I would think there is more of a guarantee of payment from RA's seen as the social welfare make the payment specifically for rent and it can be paid direct to the LL were as a working man could possible lose his job and take a while to find a new one. As well as that the social welfare check bank statements every six months to make sure the rent is being paid and if an RA recipient wants to move home and keep receiving payments they have to bring forward the deposit from the last place to show that they took care of it.

Do a search on here and you will find probably hundreds of threads to directly contradict all of this. Like any subset of society, the majority of RA tenants are tarred with the sins of the minority. That search will also show you landlords who have been badly burned by RA tenants be it non payment of rent, damage to the property or anti social behaviour. You will also probably find people who claim it's because landlords are not tax compliant.

The bottom line is that there are two groups of people who can blame for the lack of properties who accept RA - the councils who have unilaterally cut payments to landlords year on year for some time now, and those bad apple RA tenants who ruin things for the decent ones.

the_syco

BrickFist wrote: »

I'm wondering why Landlords think there's more chance of an RA recipient not paying rent in time than a professional ?

The simple answer is this; the professional pays in advance (start of the month), whereas RA is paid in arrears (end of the month).

Also, if the professional has a job, he most likely will get paid, and give the LL the rent. If they has problems, they'll usually the LL otherwise. The RA recipient will sometimes find out that they don't have this weeks rent due to a f**k up by the council/the government/new process, and some LL's just don't want this uncertainty (and not even getting to the bad RA recipients!).

Finally, there's the issue of deposit. If the tenant has the deposit and the first months rent, great. But if paid in arrears, the RA recipient won't have the first month, and may have gotten the deposit from their CWO. Thus the perception is that as it's not "their" money, "they" may not care about the LL's property, as "they" may not care about getting "their" deposit back.

"They" being the minority problem RA tenants that are ruining it for everyone else.

khards

There is also the (huge) issue of tax avoidance and cash in hand rent that goes on. We rent a house through an agent, all cash in hand. The trouble with this is that nobody wants to upset the egg cart.
We need work doing on the house, but really don't want to move. The landlord don't want to move us on because he gets about 50% more than paying tax on it.

OldNotWIse

fussyonion wrote: »

OP, I've been in your situation and I know you're frustrated but you must look at it from a Landlord's point of view.

Every year the Rent Allowance is reviewed and 9 times out of 10, the allowance is reduced; you're then asked to request your LL to reduce the rent in order for you to be able to continue receiving RA.

This isn't fair on the LL.

Why should he reduce his rent just to suit you when he can get a professional tenant in, who'll pay the requested rent every month, with no issues.

I had to bring the Rent Review form to my LL every year and every year I had to ask him to reduce the rent.

I was humiliated and embarrassed and I completely took my LL's side. I didn't think it was fair on him and I always said if I was a LL, I would avoid RA tenants like the plague.

You have to look at it from the LL's side-he's usually the one out of pocket.

I thought tenants on SW were expected to make up the shortfall themselves? Rent allowance doesn't cover the entire rent surely?

foggy_lad

OldNotWIse wrote: »

I thought tenants on SW were expected to make up the shortfall themselves? Rent allowance doesn't cover the entire rent surely?

They must pay €30 weekly but if the supplement indicates a maximum rent of €100/week they can't rent somewhere for €110 because they basically cant afford to cover the extra themselves if on welfare payments.

Ericaa

BrickFist wrote: »

Also allot of rent limits have been raised recently, for a family of three in Dublin the maximum rent limit is 950 per month. There are plenty of properties available to let for that price and under but again none are accepting RA. I have never had to go to my LL and ask him to lower the rent but i suppose when cuts happen that's what allot of people have to do.

Its just a maddening situation.

Holy crap...950?! It's 475 where I live and it's impossible to find anywhere half decent because of it

ChRoMe

whippet wrote: »

You have forgotten to mention the third thing:

3. The Landlord wants to protect his property and may well have been stung before by a tenant who was not in full time employment, paying the full rent themselves and has decided that a tenant who has to earn the full amount of the rent themselves will respect a property more than someone who has someone else to pay for them.

I fall in to category 3, after having a RA tenant destroy my house costing me thousands in repairs etc ... I will not accept a RA tenant again and since then I have had no problems with non-RA tenants and am quite happy to discriminate to protect my investment.

Also, I pay all taxes due on the rental; registered with the PRTB and fulfil all my obligations as a landlord.

Plenty of professionals destroy rental properties, there is no correlation.

fussyonion

Grandpa Hassan wrote: »

Ok, how about the fact that the LL gets paid at the start of the month rather than the end, and the deposit it the tenants own money, so they are greater incentivized to protect it.

Should turn the question round. Why should a LL take a RA tenant over a professional?

I can't think of one positive reason why a LL would choose a RA tenant over a professional and that's coming from someone who was on RA and hated it and its' system.

fussyonion

Elephant Man from china wrote: »

This won't be popular but couldn't agree more. No way I'm renting my extremely valuable asset to someone who can't be bothered to work.

Simple solution to this one OP, it involves getting a job!

/not trolling

Like I said, I was a RA tenant and it was nothing but a nightmare for me and my partner.

We found ourselves in a situation where we had to claim it but we both hated it, hated the fact employment was out of the question in order to claim RA, hated the rent review forms that came in every year with the predictable reductions in allowance and above all, HATED having to ask our very nice and very understanding Landlord, who had his own mortgage, to reduce the rent so it fell in line with RA limits.

It was a very depressing time for us and all during our experience, my sympathies lay with my Landlord, not with us.

I often said to my partner "Why should our LL suffer because of RA? He has a mortgage".

If I was a LL, I wouldn't be bothered with the baggage that comes with RA; the yearly forms to fill out, the reductions, the less and less money coming in, it's just not a positive experience and I'm not here slating people on RA, I'm simply telling my side of the story and saying that no, I don't see any good points to renting a property to a RA tenant when you can have professionals in who'll pay the rent themselves with no aggro.

Sorry for the long-windedness of my post.

Thoie

As a former RA tenant myself, I'd agree with a lot of that. There is no security for the landlord. I was "lucky" in that I was living in a place a few years before I lost my job, so my landlord already knew me, but in general he didn't accept RA.

As well as all the hoops to jump through (form filling, being asked to reduce rent, payment in arrears), there are also the times when payment just stops for no reason. It happened me one month that I got a call from the landlord asking why payment hadn't come through, which was the first I heard about it. I borrowed some money to sort him out (as his mortgage was due), and spent a week phoning and calling in to see why the payment had stopped. Eventually I was told that my allowance shouldn't have been stopped, and it would be paid through to the landlord. It took another 3 weeks to get to him (and he then refunded me). There was no ownership from the health board, no accountability, no explanations and certainly no apologies.

In my case I was lucky that I could scrape the money together to cover the short term, but if I hadn't, the landlord would have been perfectly in his rights to issue me notice, which neither of us wanted.

Thoie

OldNotWIse wrote: »

Re the month behind, surely that is only an issue in the beginning? I mean, after that they are still getting paid monthly?

Up until the point when the health board suddenly turn off the claim for no reason. If I hadn't borrowed the money to pay the landlord, there'd have been a minimum of 4 weeks before he got paid (leaving him struggling to find the money to pay the mortgage during that time). If the tenant wasn't as persistent as I was (and I'd most people wouldn't be), that could have dragged on an awful lot longer.

If it had dragged on, during that time he could have missed a second mortgage payment, or maybe even a third.

So maybe landlords are not discriminating against RA recipients, but against the HSE's pathetic record keeping and lack of accountability? Regardless, it absolutely sucks to be the RA recipient, as you get stuck in the middle, struggling to find somewhere reasonable to live, while keeping a landlord, the healthboard and the social welfare office happy, and looking for work at the same time.

ShaShaBear

There was no such thing as a month in arrears when I had to claim RA.

My flat was €100 per week and I funded that out of my own JSA payment every single week until I got my first (weekly) RA payment in the Post Office. Then I payed him €400 the day the next weekly instalment was due out of my backdate, and he agreed to call back in a months time for the next monthly payment. I was always ahead, like any other renting tenant would be. On the two occasions that the dodgy system left me without RA for a number of weeks, I reverted back to paying out of my own pocket, sometimes even using savings when I was really stuck on bill week etc.

No working "professional" would have touched my flat with a bargepole. I had no means to dry my clothes except hanging them on rope across my sitting room ceiling, I had one storage radiator right beside the drafty front door that was meant to heat the whole flat, the landlord had used playground foam flooring in the bathroom and kitchen, there was no means of escape in case of fire, only one window in the entire flat and it was single-glazed, I could actually hear my neighbour's phone conversations, and sometimes even what the other person was saying if he was standing close enough to the large door-shaped mess on the MDF wall between the two flats that clearly used to be connected. There was no ventilation or air conditioning, I had no freezer, my bed was held up by bricks and the solicitors who worked in the building upstairs parked directly in front of my door, and I often had to throw pebbles at their window to get them down to move because I literally could not get out to go to college without climbing over three Jags.

When I moved out he retained my deposit because I was on RA and if I contested it he was going to tell them I had someone living with me and that I never paid the rent on time. So I had to let the €400 deposit go, and share a bed with my 17 year old sister for a month until I had enough cash to move out again.

Landlords aint no bunch of roses either. There's refusing a RA tenant, and then there is making a mockery of them.

the_syco

ShaShaBear wrote: »

When I moved out he retained my deposit because I was on RA and if I contested it he was going to tell them I had someone living with me and that I never paid the rent on time.

Hope you reported the SOB to Revenue, fire-department, etc?

ShaShaBear

the_syco wrote: »

Hope you reported the SOB to Revenue, fire-department, etc?

I did, and assuming that he knew someone that knew someone, because the result of the investigation was that my flat was essentially a basement staff area for the solicitors upstairs. Bedroom was used for storing files, sitting room was for lunch breaks and there was a toilet and kitchenette for staff. It got me nowhere, but it just goes to show that sometimes RA tenants behave the way they do because SOBs like this dude remove all trust.

ChRoMe

OldNotWIse wrote: »

"All of group A will do X because I know one person from group A who did X"

- basing discrimination on one experience does not negate it.

Goodbye.

Indeed the old phrase goes "the plural of anecdote is not data"

athtrasna

OldNotWIse wrote: »

hummmmm........ An insult...followed by the usual boardsie "read the posts!".... and then you make a valid point that one can actually take seriously

No insult...I was disputing your "landlords don't take RA for one of two reasons" type assertion. And if you had read back you would see that I made that same "valid point" in my post on the first page :P

murphaph

OldNotWIse wrote: »

"All of group A will do X because I know one person from group A who did X"

- basing discrimination on one experience does not negate it.

Goodbye.

Would you buy a house beside a halting site?

the_syco

OldNotWIse wrote: »

basing discrimination on one experience does not negate it

Not learning from ones mistakes can be costly. Esp if the loss of payment was totally beyond the control of the RA tenant. It would actually be a lesson in how the RA system works, and how no-one is liable when the system screws up. You could take it on the chin, and how the gubbernment doesn't screw your rent over at some random point in time, or you could get someone who doesn't depend on RA to pay the rent, and hope they work out better.

beauf

One experience is better than no experience.

Considering the shortage of supply and obvious demand then it seems people who have no issues with the RA system would be leaping at this business opportunity themselves.

Consider though, the Govt who has Nama, thus lots of property, the Banks, a lot of the mortgages and also paying the rent. Has decided not to supply this service either. But instead make it unattractive to the private sector LL, increase the costs to the LL, and reduce the tenants allowance.

whippet

OldNotWIse wrote: »

"All of group A will do X because I know one person from group A who did X"

- basing discrimination on one experience does not negate it.

Goodbye.

I openly admit to discrimination - and I am justifying it based on a risk assessment that I have made to protect my own property and wallet. You don't agree with me and that is fine; but at the end of the day my financial and family interests are far more important to me than some random liberal politically correct keyboard warrior.

The Spider

Another reason and it's a big one is wear an tear, people on rent allowance will more than likely be home all day, that means more wear and tear in general on the property. We lived across from an apartment with RA tenants and they had people around all day and night, drinking and hanging outside, I wouldn't want that for my place.

Not all are the same, I was on it myself many moons ago 1995, but worked as well, oh and the flat wasn't exaclty a luxury apartment if you know what I mean.

Santa Cruz

OldNotWIse wrote: »

It's one of two things:

1. The landlord is a snob and only wants "professionals" to pay their buy-to-let mortgage for them, or

2. The landlord is a stinge and isn't declaring rental income for tax purposes.

I don't know which is worse

In your narrow little mind there might be only two things that discourage landlords from taking rent allowance. How about the rent allowance tenants that have wrecked property, sold appliances, failed to pay up, landlords rent cut after review etc. If you are a property owner it is easy to decide between the above and a professional with good references, guaranteed income who will look after a place instead of having a crowd of wasters sitting around in it all day watching Jeremy Kyle

OldNotWIse

Santa Cruz wrote: »

In your narrow little mind there might be only two things that discourage landlords from taking rent allowance. How about the rent allowance tenants that have wrecked property, sold appliances, failed to pay up, landlords rent cut after review etc. If you are a property owner it is easy to decide between the above and a professional with good references, guaranteed income who will look after a place instead of having a crowd of wasters sitting around in it all day watching Jeremy Kyle

And I have a narrow little mind....lol