{"id":635,"date":"2012-11-08T12:59:38","date_gmt":"2012-11-08T12:59:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/?p=635"},"modified":"2012-11-14T10:58:52","modified_gmt":"2012-11-14T10:58:52","slug":"landlords-concerned-about-housing-benefit-reforms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/landlords-concerned-about-housing-benefit-reforms.html","title":{"rendered":"Landlords Concerned About Housing Benefit Reforms"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>With public spending at an all time high, the government is trying out a<br \/>\nseries of hard-hitting reforms in an effort to claw back some money. The<br \/>\ncessation of Child Benefit payments to more affluent parents has been a<br \/>\npopular topic of discussion in the last few days, but reforms are also in<br \/>\nthe works for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/faq_new_customers.html#question39\">Housing Benefit<\/a>, which is causing many landlords some<br \/>\nconcern.<\/p>\n<p>One recent trial scheme encouraged landlords to offer concessions on<br \/>\ntheir rents in return for having Housing Benefit paid directly to them<br \/>\nrather than the tenant. Caps to Housing Benefit have affected a lot of<br \/>\ntenants in the private sector, as many are no longer able to afford<br \/>\nlarger accommodation, so any concession made on the monthly rent is<br \/>\nlikely to be most welcome.<\/p>\n<p>Lord Freud, the Welfare Reform Minister, has declared the trial scheme a<br \/>\nhuge success and claimed that in London around one third of landlords had<br \/>\nwillingly reduced the rents on their properties in return for direct<br \/>\npayments.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere has been no mass exodus of people moving out of city centres or<br \/>\nwidespread homelessness because of our housing reforms,\u201d he was quoted as<br \/>\nsaying at the NLA annual conference.<\/p>\n<p>However, in a recent survey of more than one thousand landlords, more<br \/>\nthan 60% said they were unwilling to reduce rents in return for direct<br \/>\npayments and many expressed concern over the government\u2019s failure to be<br \/>\nclear about when exactly landlords could demand a direct payment\u2014the<br \/>\ngovernment has refused to guarantee the current policy of releasing<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/faq_new_customers.html#question39\">payments direct to landlords<\/a> once a tenant has fallen 8 weeks into<br \/>\narrears. As such, more than 90% of those surveyed said they would think<br \/>\ntwice about letting to tenants on benefits.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With public spending at an all time high, the government is trying out a series of hard-hitting reforms in an effort to claw back some money. The cessation of Child Benefit payments to more affluent parents has been a popular &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/landlords-concerned-about-housing-benefit-reforms.html\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=635"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":647,"href":"https:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635\/revisions\/647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}