Your rent account

Catalyst Communities Housing Association

The rent you pay enables us to provide your home and services and keep our standards high. This is why paying rent is so important. We can offer advice and support to help you pay the rent.

How can I pay my rent?

At the start of your tenancy, you must give us a cheque for the first two weeks’ rent. After that you can pay your rent in any of the following ways:

• by direct debit
• with an allpay.net swipe card
• by phone with a debit card
• by cheque.

Difficulty paying your rent

It is very important that you keep up to date with your rent payments. They must be regular and on time.

If you miss payments, your account will go into arrears. This means you owe us this amount.

If you find it difficult to pay your rent, you must contact your local office straight away. If you ignore your rent payments and do not contact us for help, you could lose your home.

What happens if I am in arrears?

If you are behind with your payments, we will first write or telephone to tell you that your account is in arrears. Please contact us straight away or pay off the arrears.

If your account is not cleared, we will write again to say you are still in arrears and that we are thinking of sending a notice of seeking possession (NOSP). We will serve you with a NOSP if you have not contacted us, or your arrears stay the same or increase.

A NOSP is a notice we send before applying to court to repossess a property. It will state why we are seeking possession.

At the end of the notice period (2 or 4 weeks depending on your tenancy agreement), if you have not started to pay off the arrears, we may apply to court for possession of your home.

We will always try to contact you as soon as possible – out of hours if necessary – when your account goes into arrears. This is so we can sort out any problems before it’s too late.

What happens if I receive a court date?

If you do not want the case to go to court, you need to clear all the arrears and pay the court application fee, seven days before the hearing date. It costs the association money to make a court application, so we will usually try and recover the costs from you.

What happens if I receive an eviction date?

This means we have applied for a warrant for your eviction from the property.

To avoid the eviction, you need to pay all the arrears together with the court costs. If you want to appeal you must apply to the court to ask for the application for eviction to be set aside. We recommend that you seek independent legal advice.

Some effects of having rent arrears

Applying for a transfer

If you want a transfer, a mutual exchange, or a move under a mobility scheme, rent arrears will reduce your chance of success.

Getting credit

If we get a county court judgment against you to recover unpaid rent, the judgment may mean you cannot get credit.

Getting a mortgage

If you hope to buy your home through the HomeBuy scheme or a shared-ownership scheme, the mortgage lender will ask us for a reference. If you have had rent arrears, you will be less likely to get a mortgage and buy your own home.

Homelessness

If you are evicted as a result of rent arrears, local councils may judge you to be ‘intentionally homeless’. This would mean you would have no right to an offer of temporary accommodat

For more information on your rent account please read the leaflet below.

 Your rent account (561KB / 32 pages)