{"id":856,"date":"2013-04-05T13:05:39","date_gmt":"2013-04-05T13:05:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/?p=856"},"modified":"2013-04-05T13:05:39","modified_gmt":"2013-04-05T13:05:39","slug":"rent-arrears-on-the-rise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/rent-arrears-on-the-rise.html","title":{"rendered":"Rent Arrears on the Rise"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Figures released at the end of last year showed a decline in the<br \/>\nnumbers of tenants more than two months behind on their rent<br \/>\npayments. This was good news for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/landlords_property_manager_professional.prod.html\">landlords<\/a> as the same period in 2012<br \/>\nhad been 50% higher than 2011. Unfortunately the situation has since<br \/>\nworsened and the average number of tenants in debt is up nearly 5%,<br \/>\nwhich means 2.3% of tenants living in England and Wales are very<br \/>\nbehind on their rent.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Why are tenants falling into debt?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It is not uncommon for tenants to slide into debt over the Christmas<br \/>\nperiod. Rent is often seen as being unimportant when kids are<br \/>\nclamouring for expensive games consoles and extra food is needed.<br \/>\nUnfortunately, other factors are also at play.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Rise in the cost of living<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>As most of us cannot fail to have noticed, living in the UK is not<br \/>\ncheap these days. Food, fuel and energy all costs a fortune and with<br \/>\nwage increases well behind the rate of inflation, it is not easy to<br \/>\nmake ends meet, particularly if you are living on the breadline<br \/>\nalready. All it takes is one household emergency\u2014a broken washing<br \/>\nmachine or a large bill\u2014and disaster strikes.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Benefit cuts<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The government\u2019s attempt to shrink the annual welfare bill is another<br \/>\nfactor. Many tenants face seeing their <a href=\"http:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/video.lha_tenants.html#watch-demo-anchor\">Housing Benefit<\/a> payments cut,<br \/>\nwhich will of course have a big effect on their weekly income.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Look on the bright side<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It isn\u2019t all bad news for landlords. Mortgage rates are exceptionally<br \/>\nlow at the moment, so if you are ready to expand your property<br \/>\nportfolio and you have lots of equity, it should be easy to find<br \/>\nfunding.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Figures released at the end of last year showed a decline in the numbers of tenants more than two months behind on their rent payments. This was good news for landlords as the same period in 2012 had been 50% &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/rent-arrears-on-the-rise.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-856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856","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=856"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":858,"href":"https:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856\/revisions\/858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}