I am aware that some Brits have gone/are going back to UK to live - and many have not yet sold their French homes.
Right, with that scenario - has anyone tried to get UK Council Housing or UK Private Rental ?
This is a serious question and your thoughts/experiences will be most welcome.
Social Housing in the UK is in theory open to all UK citizens who are resident in the UK. In practice this is not true.
Many councils wonât consider anyone who has been resident less than 3 months, and most apply quite stringent allocations policies that mean if you can afford to rent privately then you wonât be considered. Having a home in France, even unsold, might also disqualify you. Then, even if you do make it through the criteria you can then spend years on a waiting list as the number of social homes is very limited. Generally you would have to meet one of the special criteria, like disability, to qualify and get something allocated.
Private renting is a different matter. With a deposit, a way of proving a reliable income and a reference then there are few problems. However, people will probably be shocked at the cost in relation to France. Unlike many cities in France, there is no rent control.
Families are given priority for council accommodation in the UK, many private landlords now âcherry pickâ tenants ie no housing benefit claimants, Iâd guess pensioners with a guaranteed income for life are seen as a good bet.
Interesting comments - thanks Tim and Jane - Iâll pass this on.
When in 2015 we left our Essex small-town three-bed semi (3 trains an hour and 45 minutes up to Liverpool Street) similar properties with off road parking were costing ÂŁ1,500 a month in private rent.
I imagine itâs still around that level still.
When we let our UK home I said we were happy to have people with 1 dog. Our letting agent said weâd be better to try for tenants without pets . I wonder how many would be tenants get turned down because agents automatically have a no pet policy.
I did have a quiet word with the agent when she arranged a visit by a woman who had 5 children, housing benefit and her partner was around for 3 days a week! I felt bad as Iâm one of 6 but my biggest concern were my lovely neighbours who are elderly. We have a lovely family with 3 children and the mum says living in our house is like Christmas which I thought was kind.
Perhaps weâre mean but we wonât accept benefit claimants nor tenants with pets, experience has taught us that both groups end up costing us money.
We sold our house/business last year and are now renting. Waiting for our house purchase in France to finalize.
However, we took ages to find a property to rent that would accept 2 cats. ÂŁ850
3bed house in a hamlet of 6 houses. No shops. Drive is 10 minutes to the nearest village/town for supplies. But train line in Dundee/St. Andrews/Cupar only 10 minutes
Edinburgh 1hour to the Airport, so all in all not a bad location.
Deposit 1 month rent, internet on the slowest setting possible, mobile phone not spot.
Rent in towns much more expensive and almost impossible to find with pets.
From a landlordâs perspective pets can and do cause damage which has to be paid for, the security deposit often doesnât cover this cost so youâre left out of pocket, why take the risk?
And mess up the garden in different ways, and leave a flea infestation to be dealt withâŚI love animals, but it would be a risk renting at a distance so I get why many landlords are reluctant. In many modern developments itâs written into the lease of the flats that there must be no animals in the property, which is an invariable condition when you buy. So the flats canât be rented to animal owners at a later date.
My friend rents on Canvey Island in Essex. Itâs commutable to London so rents are fairly high. They pay ÂŁ1000 per month for an unfurnished 2 bed bungalow with a tiny garden and no garage.
They have a dog and 2 cats and solved the pet issue by offering 2 months rent as a deposit. The owner even allowed them to put in a cat flap.
As the place is unfurnished I doubt that the animals could do more than ÂŁ2000 worth of damage.
Try re-carpeting a house, repairing scratched woodwork and pay for two lots of fumigation after a flea infestation out of a deposit of ÂŁ600, the tenant willingly signed an agreement which clearly stated no pets but totally ignored that so tough luck landlord, add-on loss of rent whilst the repairs were done and we lost around ÂŁ3k.
We will be finding ourselves in that position by October when our current rental agreement ends. Various things mean instead of buying our dream here we will be looking for a house to rent around the south coast or anywhere really nicely rural if anyoneâs got anything or knows anyone who has. Thanks.
Our tenants took a while to sort their paperwork, finally after waiting for some wage slips from the husband the agent and I agreed if they paid 6 months rent in advance they could move in. They did and I was shocked that someone with that amount of money didnât just buy!
When I first came to France I had the profit from the sale of my house in the UK which wasnât enough to buy a house in the area of France I wanted to live, but was enough to pay 6 months rent up-front on a house. I had no references or a French guarantor so it was the only way to rent.
As a former Housing Association tenant in one of the largest shire counties in England I feel somewhat qualified to comment. I was re housed under the Homeless provisions (I still have the letter which one day I will get framed lol) . This was many years ago and I and my 2 (then small) children were among the last to âbenefit â. Shortly after we were re housed the rules were changed and you now have to be âliterally rooflessâ to qualify for any form of rehousing . Re Housing can take the form of putting you in a hostel or a care home. The only reason it didnât happen to us was because there was an empty property available during the 3 week timeframe of the warrant . There was no âchoiceâ. I was asked to look at a list of âareasâ and rank them by preference but had no say in which area or property was finally afforded to us and had I turned it down I would not have been given anything else. As it turned out it was in what was then a small village 8 miles from the nearest town. The house itself was quite literally (& Iâm not exaggerating) a virtually unliveable hovel. Without going into too much detail the only thing right about it was that the roof didnât leak (much) . It had been occupied by an elderly incontinent lady & empty for several months . It reeked, 4â thick black mould in the kitchen , plaster falling off throughout. Basically it was in a very very poor state. My father , a very mild mannered man, complained it wasnât fit to house animals in let alone his grandchildren. It was owned by the local council , whoâs workmen did the best they could to help make it liveable over the next few years & I improved it with much effort, time and at my expense . It passed into the ownership of a Housing Association after about 6 years . They seems to be in partnership with Messrs Bodgit & Leggit , thatâs when they could be bothered to actually reply to requests for repairs . Our roof had a leak for almost 20 years! Fortunes change in time and my dad died leaving me enough to buy a small house here (or a beach hut in the U.K.) . So here I am . I very much hope I never have to set foot in the U.K. to live again. The whole experience was quite simply awful and I wouldnât wish it on anyone. From what Iâve heard itâs got worse not better although the standard of housing had improved . A lady in the close that was built on the open fields opposite us begged and pleaded with me to exchange properties before we moved out to come here . She lived in a 2 bed house and was desperate to move to a 3 bed or larger as she had 3 children (ours was 3 bedroomed albeit very small). We couldnât do it as she was with a different Housing Association and there wasnât enough time . The only way theyâd countenance her taking our house over was if I moved into her house (ie a house swap) & then subsequently gave that up when we moved here. I cannot imagine any local authority giving priority to people returning from living in Europe. They will go to the back of the queue. The city near the village I left (last year) had many homeless people living literally on the streets and insufficient hostel places . I canât for one moment believe theyâd re house returning âex pats â .
The situation Vanessa describes is mirrored across the UK and also in cities here, whilst France has in the region of 2 million empty homes most are in rural communes where there is no work or public transport. IMO the UKâs current housing crisis can be traced back to the selling off of council houses in the 1980âs, not a bad idea in itself if the proceeds had been used to replenish the housing stock which sadly never happened.
Agree - selling council houses is neither here nor there; after all it is housing stock whether owned by the council or privately. The problem was that councils were prevented from providing more housing stock because of changes to finance rules. Thatcherâs idea being to boost private developers who would build the needed dwellings.
Unfortunately, as history shows, they did but not at nearly a high enough rate - keeping prices and profits high by restricting supply might be an excellent move for the builders but it is not so great when it comes to actually housing people.
The price that houses was sold for was far too cheap - they should have been sold at very near or at market value. This could have provided plenty of money to build new. By selling cheap the initial purchasers were simply making big profits by reselling at full market price asap. The council (effectively us) missing out.
The houses were certainly sold at a discount but at the time factories etc were closing and the land sat empty for years which councils could have bought, large developers snapped up the sites and made vast profits as Paul said.