Negative attitudes towards tenants by landlords as tenants on benefits shunned have been uncovered by a new study.
Less than one in five (18%) of landlords in the UK do not currently rent their properties out to tenants receiving housing benefits, reveals new research from house and flat sharing website SpareRoom.co.uk.
It also says that just 35% of landlords had let to tenants on the benefit previously.
There has been a clear decline over the past two years in this area. At the end of 2011, over a third (34%) of respondents had tenants on benefits at that time in one or more of their properties, while almost half (45%) claimed that they had taken in this type of tenant in the past.
Nearly six in ten landlords (57%) do not currently accept anyone on benefits, specifying no housing benefit tenants on advertisements. Almost two thirds (65%) of landlords say they will not take tenants on benefits even if they have a guarantor.
Director of SpareRoom, Matt Hutchinson, says: “The 2008 move to stop landlords receiving rent payments direct, designed to give those on benefits greater responsibility for their finances, has had overwhelmingly negative and lasting repercussions for tenants receiving housing benefits.
“Almost six in ten landlords now won’t even entertain the idea of letting to tenants on benefits, and our research shows this could only be the tip of the iceberg, as the rollout of Universal Credit is set to make the situation even worse.”1
1 http://old.lettingagenttoday.co.uk/news_features/Tenants-on-benefits-shunned-by-4-in-5-landlords