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Written by Emma Lunn

A Kent-based professional landlord has announced that he will no longer be accepting tenants on benefits.

Fergus Wilson, who owns about 1,000 properties in Kent with his wife Judith, told This Is Kent that he is no longer going to rent to people on benefits as he is worried about their ability to pay.

Mr Wilson told the website: "Many, many wise landlords are not taking housing benefit any more. The Government is cutting back and they are saying 'we're not going to pay you as much'. In addition to that, we've got the Universal Credit situation."

Under Universal Credit, housing benefit will be paid directly to tenants rather than landlords, to encourage claimants to take responsibility for their finances. However, many landlords fear that tenants with poor budgeting skills will not prioritise rent payments.

Universal Credit was due to be introduced in Ashford this year but the roll-out has now been delayed in the area until at least 2015.

Wilson says he has given his tenants in receipt of housing notice to leave in the new year.


 

Comments

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    its going to hard for landlords in 2014 i expect many to go bankcrupt

    • 21 December 2013 01:20 AM
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    All landlords can't all stop renting to people on housing benefits or there will be a vast number of empty properties. This will mean landlords are guaranteed to get no rent, they then won't be able to pay their BTL mortgages there properties will be repossessed and someone who will rent to people on benefits will buy them at a knock down price.

    • 20 December 2013 19:00 PM
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    I think private landlords are doing the right thing not collecting rents from the public purse.
    This will put more pressure on the much needed council housing being built.

    Private landlords are then free to collect rents from those who can afford to pay.

    • 20 December 2013 18:56 PM
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    I cannot to begin to express my disgust for the Wilsons and their kind. The utter greed of these people is staggering. After having their snouts in the trough of government funds for many years to fund their highly leveraged ponzi scheme, they now want to cut off the hand that's fed their greed for so long. Presumably they'll be renting to hard working immigrants on minimum wage instead. The Wilsons are beyond contempt. The spinelessness of the British "government" must also be seen for the sniveling maggots that they are and for bailing out their pals in the city to save the bacon of the likes of the Wilsons. They are truly disgusting excuses for human beings.

    • 20 December 2013 18:35 PM
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    Massive focus and crackdown on landlords who aren't paying the taxes due on income earned through rent coming very very soon (and these will be back-dated by up to 10 years).

    Mr Wilson (and the landlords he represents) would do better to worry about that.

    • 20 December 2013 16:57 PM
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    You landlords are like females. You dont know when you were born and behave like the greedy selfish little frigid useless girls we men now have to put up with.
    You get mortgages and rents handouts from benefits and banks like there is no tomorrow. You created the subprime situation with the banks with your greedy overstretching. You whine about the unemployed like the little girls that you are, yet you are the first whiney little cows criminal constructively dismissing them to try to cover up your gross incompetence and laziness and stupidy, whilst then using hr and crim8.al agents to blacklist them from working.

    Despite the fact directly because of your greed and ignorance you attack the hands that have fed you for so long because a
    new hitler creatureprime minister tells you to help him kill them, which you and your other criminal agent friends the estate agents do wi5h guesto. This is despite us bailing you greedy fat obese swine out to the tunes of billions of pounds not just here but around the whole planet.
    Not only are you resp9nsible with hitler klameroon for what is obviously many more than 31000 deaths undet conservatism(brownstuff and bliar had more) you are also directly responsible for the evil wage inflation through your greed in raising rental prices interstellarly to line your greedy pockets when you collapsed the housing markets through your incessant greed and o er stretch8ng.
    Can you admit this and make amends? Can you fuck.
    You greedy murdering shylocks with klameron the buffoon murder them by evicting them into the freezing cold, depress them so much you murder by suicide, and starve them by then cutting theyre benefits.
    You are truly evil and sick, sicker than watson, who destroyed a few lives, where you have destroyed and murdered at least hundreds of thousands by a situation you and your masonic pals have created.
    And here you are causing the innocent suffering again, by refusing to rent to them when ypu scum created the situation in the first place. You need more savage deaths than those you have caused us, much more

    • 20 December 2013 00:00 AM
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    To my understanding under the new system anyone that fails to pay their rent. The money owed is now taken from their benefits. And rent is paid direct to the Landlord until the arrease is repaid.

    Council where only allowed to cliam direct from Benifits however it now open to private landlord.

    Landlords should check the fact before giving notices to Housing Beneifit claiments.

    • 18 December 2013 02:43 AM
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    Totally agree with his decision and who could blame him.

    We are in the same boat up in Scotland and have just short of 100 properties and taking the same stance.

    Its not poor budgeting skills, its the lack of consequences for not paying rent. Courts simply arn't interested.

    Its a big pay day for people on benefits ahead at the tax payers expense.

    • 17 December 2013 10:44 AM
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