Renting to Relatives and Housing Benefit Question ?
Surely this is illegal?
Quick Property Sale
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December 4th, 2009 at 10:27 pm
Housing Benefit will not be paid if you rent from a relative. If they have different surnames your friend will probably not declare her cousin as a relative and the Benefits Office may not find out. However, they will be committing Benefit Fraud by not declaring it.
December 7th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
“Yes”, but it seems to be almost common practice for Councils to give housing benefit (and even Council Houses) to people who own property in other parts of the country.
The whole benefits system is riddled with fraud, incompetence and unfairness … and our MP’s set the standard == after all, if my MP can get the taxpayer to pay ‘wages’ to their kids and claim for their Mum’s house, why can’t I ?
December 9th, 2009 at 8:29 pm
Yes it is. My sister has some buy to let properties and we looked into renting from her (and we have different surnames too). But we found out this was illegal as we were receiving HB at the time. It just wasn’t worth risking the Benefits people finding out and being charged with fraud. And I suggest your friend cancels this idea.
December 11th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
Whilst it is possible to obtain Housing Benefit for homes rented from family and friends, the council need to agree first that the arrangement of friends or family renting to each other is a genuine one and not one fabricated purely to obtain HB – swapping houses with a friend upon redundancy purely so each can get benefit is not a genuine arrangement and the council will easily identify it as not being one.
I used to work as a Benefits Assessor, and people try to do this all the time. I’m sure some cases slip through unnoticed but it’s very easy to catch people out because they can’t show all the correct proof of residency.