ARLA Propertymark and other organisations from across the housing sector have joined forces to support tenants and landlords facing rent arrears as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak.
Amidst concerns about the impact that the virus has had on tenant finances, the organisations are launching guidance offering practical ways in which landlords and tenants can work to address arrears that might be building as a result of the pandemic.
The guidance includes the need for both parties to flag up any problems that might be arising early on, along with advice about measures that can be taken such as agreeing rent deferrals, reductions and suspensions.
It provides support also for tenants applying for benefits where need be and points to resources available to help develop budgeting plans to ensure that tenants can cover the cost of essential items.
A joint statement - from the National Residential Landlords Association, the Chartered Institute of Housing, The Property Redress Scheme, My Deposits, the Tenancy Deposit Scheme and ARLA Propertymark - says:
“COVID-19 has posed significant challenges for both tenants and landlords. As a group we are committed to doing everything possible to sustain tenancies both through and beyond this period of crisis.
“The guidance being launched today has an important role to play in achieving this and we encourage all tenants and landlords to work through it together in a spirit of positive co-operation.”
You can see the guidance here.
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What can it possibly say when you can't get blood out of a stone?
The problem here though, Mark is that unlike almost every other credit line, rent is not connected to a tenant’s credit score. Sure, you can’t get blood out of a stone, but (empathy & emotion aside) the system is such that your creditworthiness must take a hit. It simply reflects what is. A more extreme and crude example might be a lovely vicar’s wife knocking down and killing a pedestrian in her car - someone who ran out quickly and unexpectedly. An accident in every sense of the normal understanding of the word, and despite the whole world sympathising with her, it is almost certain she would be prosecuted for dangerous driving, if not driving with due care & attention…for that is the system and the thinking would go that if she were then the accident wouldn’t have occurred. It’s not tenant’s fault, but we cannot break the system, or if we do, we have to have parity…temporary legalised shoplifting with an agreement with the shopkeeper to maybe pay one day…or even complete suspension of the amount owing?? I think not!
That's why there is a welfare system & why people have savings to tide themselves over when something bad happens.
Unfortunately there is now culture of entitlement in this country and abdication of personal responsibility, and in the case of renting properties backed up by a raft of Laws. It was bad enough before Covid, but Covid has made a damn sight worse.
Many years ago scientists extracted Haemoglobin from fossilised dinosaur bones.
FANTASTIC comment by David Price - I love it, not only because I'm genuinely interested in a wide variety of things including this but also because it once again shows "Mad Mark" as I call him is wrong!
At first I thought David was joking, but on looking into it I found he was completely correct, e.g.
- - - In 2007, Harvard Medical School reported finding and extracting collagen in a 68-million-year old T. rex and in an 80-million-year old brachylophosaurus fossil
and
- - - In 2015, Imperial College London reported finding and extracting collagen from 75-million-year-old dinosaur fossils.
Nice one! :-)
Housing benefit
That's a pretty luck lustre attempt to offer some useful content, and doesn't warrant the term guidance. At 6 pages with a load of white space it isnt much more than a leaflet, and the subject requires far more detail, or left alone. The advice offerered isnt particluarly streetwise or reliable either in context of what we know is happening at the coal face.
No Landlords call their tenants and pretty much invite them to not pay their rent, automatically offering help if needed, many are unable to.
"Apply for a mortgage holiday if you can" is wreckless advice without a detailed health warning to go with it about the implications of doing so, now and in the future.
"By confirming they are affected by coronavirus this allows the landlord to apply to defer mortgage payments..." No it doesn't, it doesn't make any difference at all. Most lenders chose not to offer MHs, and those that did had application process via underwriters.
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