Читать книгу Money: A User’s Guide - Laura Whateley - Страница 14

If you can’t afford to pay a large deposit up front there are some new products available to help you get around it. Companies like the Zero Deposit Scheme (ZDS) and Reposit offer what is basically an insurance policy for the landlord instead. With both you pay the equivalent of one week’s rent (rather than the normal six required for most security deposits); with ZDS you also pay a £26 annual admin fee for each additional year you are in the same property, and it guarantees to cover your landlord for the same sum as a traditional security deposit.

You will end up paying more with these schemes, however, because most tenants do get their full security deposit back at the end of a tenancy, whereas the money you are paying to the schemes is non-refundable. You are also still liable to pay your landlord directly for any damage that might otherwise have come out of the security deposit. Such schemes are only to be used if you are desperate to move into a rental but really not able to scrape together the cash up front.

Increasingly there are housing developers creating build-to-rent schemes that do not require a security deposit. Two of my friends live in one of the first, by Get Living London, in the old athletes’ village in the Olympic Park, London. They also have a longer-term tenancy, of a guaranteed minimum three years. Look out for similar developments.