Advice on employment and housing

Thanks

(edited 6 years ago)

The job won't be an issue - you just need to explain you are moving to the area. It doesn't matter what your address is at the time of applying.

Recruitment processes can take anything from a couple of days to a few months. It might be an issue if they need you to start ASAP and you are not based in the area and not willing to commute in the interim.

Landlords are far more likely to prefer those in employment. The savings will help, but most landlords will prefer a tenant to be in place for at least a year, and would probably want to see closer to 12 months worth of rent saved up rather than 6. You can sometimes get a guarantor, such as a parent, to help you with tenancy agreements if you are not in the strongest financial situation or don't have a significant tenancy history.

Like recruitment processes, finding a property to rent can be really quick or quite a long process. It depends on the location and your requirements, and what the local market is like. In areas with high demand it isn't uncommon to put an offer in to rent a property and for you to be turned down because they have various other better offers.

You could consider some interim options - renting rooms in someone else's property on a short term basis while you find a property. I have known people to use Air BnB on a short term basis, or even finding cheap hotels/motels if their job starts before they can find property in the area.

Oh that's great! Thanks so much for your reply! Do you mean 12 months rent as in just the rent or 12 months worth of living costs too meaning rent and bills and council tax and food etc? We'd had around 18/30K saved up between us depending on whether we go this year or stay back a year. The properties we were viewing were £450-525 a month max so would evidence of £15k+ be enough? Thank you!

Reply 2

username3114488

Original post by J-SP

Most estate agents/landlords go on the basis of you needing an income, not whether you can just cover the rent.

Typically they will apply somewhere between a x2.5 or x3.5 value of the rent.

For instance if the rent is £500 a month, they will want to see you have an income of somewhere between £1,250 and £1,750 a month to be able to cover the rent and live (before tax).

Once we both have jobs in our fields it'd be much more than that but we wouldn't be able to get 'real' jobs until we had a flat etc. Do you think they'd consider it at all based upon savings?

Reply 3

roflcakes1

You'd probably be able to get a job that starts in a month or two then use those months to look for a flat. Most jobs have to consider an employee's contracted notice period anyway. If you can't get that kind of notice period before you start a job, look for short-term lets and sub-lets which normally don't require referencing, or look into commuting for a month or two. If you're looking somewhere competitive like London, it will be harder. You'll be asked to name a guarantor who can cover the rent, they normally have to earn around 36 x the monthly rent per year, so start thinking about that and who you could ask just in case you can't get a job in time. We can't tell you how every agent or landlord will act though, it's best to sit down with an agent in the location you're moving to and talk about options - they'll know the market and their landlords far better than the answers you'll get on here.