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‘I have seen properties lie empty because only DSS tenants were available’ – Star Letter 21/11/2018

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  • 23/11/2018
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Mortgage Solutions and its sister title Specialist Lending Solutions select the most thoughtful or thought-provoking comment for Star Letter.

 

This week we picked two comments in response to the same article: Lenders’ no DSS policy a ‘return to wicked days of housing discrimination’ – MPs.

The first comes from Derek Compton, mortgage adviser at Kingston Financial Services.

He said: “As both a mortgage adviser and a landlord, I have to say that it is disgraceful that lenders do not want landlords to accept DSS tenants

“We hear that there are more people than ever looking to rent properties and a large portion of these people cannot hope to save for a deposit because they are on DSS and the councils do not have homes they can offer them. Where are they supposed to live if landlords do not accept them?

“In reality, I see numerous landlords who have accepted DSS tenants since arranging the mortgage, because they have either forgotten the requirement or think the lender has no right to say who they allow as a tenant as long as the lender gets paid their mortgage payment each month.

“Nowadays I can see a point of lenders feeling this way, as the government decided that rent allowances should no longer be paid direct to the landlord but instead should be paid to the tenant who would then take responsibility to pass them on. This will, on a number of occasions result is some tenants re-prioritising this money, especially at this time of year.

“As a result, the landlord could end up with rent arrears and as there is now so much more legal protection for the tenant, they know there is little the landlord can do in the short term.

“Having said all this, I have seen properties lie empty because only DSS tenants were available. In the main it is prejudice. I have DSS tenants in unencumbered buy to lets and they are great tenants.

“It is good to see that for once some MPs want to support landlords even if it is in a small way, because over the last two or three years penalising landlords seems to have been the order of the day.”

However Steven Pearman disagreed.

He said: “Lenders are responsible for lending the money and their clients pay for their mistakes.

“This country needs to move away from the culture of making normal people pay extra to offset decades of governmental and Financial Conduct Authority / Financial Services Authority mistakes.

“They have squeezed landlords through ill thought out, petty changes in laws which have obviously been passed on to the tenant. Who do these idiots think pays every time they think of a new cost?

“It is a fact that the arrears rate on DSS clients is higher than on normal tenants. Why should lenders customers, landlords and normal tenant’s be forced to pay more again?”

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