How To Find A Good Tenant
Landlords, our service is free to you when your property is available to rent at the Local Housing Allowance Rate (LHA rate), and you can find your properties LHA rate at lha-direct.voa.gov.uk
Even if you are looking to achieve a rental above the LHA rate, it is worth contacting us to see if we can help you with any of our special need tenants who can have higher budgets.
Tenants Affordability
Confirming the tenant can afford to pay the rent
Rent directly to the landlord
Clear Credit History
Confirming the tenant has no CCJ’s
Previous 3-years Landlord references
Confirming Tenants rent-payment history & suitability as a tenant for a new Landlord
Employment references
(if applicable)
Rent Guarantee, Legal Cover & Council Insurance Bonds
(available subject to Council)
Tenant Bio
Introducing the family
Looking For Tenants
Councils run varied schemes to attract local landlords; however, not all schemes are equal. Matching our landlords to the right packages is critical in ensuring the tenancy is as secure as possible for both the landlord and the Tenant. Please note: Just because your property is in a specific Borough does not mean that Borough has the best Tenant or terms for you!
We understand that the Tenant’s affordability is critical; you must know that your Tenant can afford the rent; even on a rental agreed at the LHA rate, you need to be aware of and avoid the dreaded “benefit cap.” In our experience, we have found that a vast majority of our landlords were unaware of how the benefit cap worked when first engaging with us.
When working with tenants employed, part or full-time, they will not be “benefit capped” and can afford the LHA rent. “What is the benefit cap in relation to rental income?” – it is when a tenant is unemployed and therefore not entitled to the full LHA rate unless they have mitigating circumstances.
An unemployed tenant has less income to work with; the benefit cap encourages the Tenant to work a minimum number of hours to receive a permitted amount of income, which underpins their overall financial position, therefore removing the benefit cap.
Each case is individual, and some tenants have an exclusion period, subject to their previous circumstances, loss of a job, illness and various other variables that are taken into consideration.
Our level of care and due diligence when Mentoring provides a stable platform for our landlords to understand how the system works, where the pitfalls are, and how to avoid them – a clear understanding of the Tenant’s suitability and risk factor.
In many ways, during these difficult times, our tenants are likely a landlord’s safest option, as the default position for the Universal Credit housing element is the LHA rate. Therefore if your Tenant has been correctly vetted, your rent is literally underpinned by our state system.
See the link below for more detailed information on the Benefit Cap.
https://revenuebenefits.org.uk/universal-credit/guidance/entitlement-to-uc/benefit-cap
Our Service provides: