Rent Allowance

Borderfox

Just a quick question on rent allowance, I had somebody ring up enquiring about renting the house I have with rent allowance but they said the rent would be paid by the Social Welfare at the end of the month not the start, is this normal?

seahorse

Yes it is; the community welfare officer always pays rent allowance in arrears. When I was on rent allowance I came to a private agreement to give the landlord a months rent in advance myself, so that he wouldn’t have to take the obvious risk involved for a landlord here. I was very broke at the time and borrowed the months rent from the credit union. Perhaps you could suggest this to your prospective tenants?

I wouldn’t allow the rent allowance itself to put you off a tenant. There are plenty of people out there who are not working due to no fault of their own.

Borderfox

I wouldnt let rent allowance affect my view of a tenant, last tenants 2 out of four were on rent allowance, they must have organised it different similar to yourself.

Thanks for the info

Xiney

There are two ways rent allowance can be paid:

1) direct to the landlord
2) to the tenant first

The first is paid in arrears at the end of the month.

The second is open to the tenant spending the money on something other than rent... most people won't, but there have been several posts on this board to that effect.

daviddwyer

Have had many exceptionally good rent allowance tenants over the years and would recoimmend same to anyone.

One point to note that in the last few weeks it has become the norm that rent allowance is taking approx 8 weeks to process form the time the tenant moves in.

So say your tenant moves in tomorrow it may be December before you get any rent at all. The social pay the rent at the end of every month (the last wednesday) and it is paidin arrears therefore you would not get Octobers rent until the 28th (providing it is processed).

One other important thing to ask your tenant is if they have been previously on rent allowance. We had a recent tenant who believed she was entitled to rent allowance but after 6 weeks was told that she didnt meet the criteria as she hadnt been renting for more than 6 months. (Its fine for those moving from one property to another - but not for first time renters)

If you can try to get the tenant to pay a month in advance and then get them to use the social cheque for the forthcoming month.

Failing that (a lot of people cannot afford to do this) - phone the Community Welfare Officer to confirm their entitlemnet to Rent Allowance - although data protection might prohibit this, but you could ask the tenant to provide proof that they were previosly receiving rent allowance or that their application in theory has been approved.