Tenants

Welcome

You will be visiting this section if you are already a tenant in one of our homes or you are interested in moving in. TWH Homes is a well-established rental organisation and licensed for letting Houses of Multiple Occupation (HMOs), meaning we meet or exceed the quality levels set by local council housing departments. Also, only around 2% of UK landlords are members of any kind of landlord standards association, but not only are we members of the UK’s largest, (the National Residential Landlords Association), we are also one of only a fraction of members who are NRLA-accredited, meaning we adhere to the high standards of knowledge and best practice set by the NRLA.

Our philosophy is one of openness and transparency, meaning you will always be able to contact your landlord to discuss your situation. You will never be met with a brick wall, and we will always try to find a win-win outcome to any personal situation you may find yourself in. We value a happy tenant above anything else, because if you’re a happy tenant, we believe you are more likely to look after your home.

If you are interested in one of our properties and want to move in

If you have seen one of our adverts or been referred to us by an existing tenant, please make sure you have registered your details. To do this, please go to www.twhhomes.co.uk/properties and click on the advert for the property you are interested in. Then click on the pink “Request viewing” button on the top right. Completing your information only takes a minute and is designed to tell us all we need to know before offering you a viewing. Your viewing is then handled by our tenant platform, called COHO. You will be invited to download COHO onto your smartphone as you are encouraged to use it as the main dashboard for your tenancy. You will receive messages from COHO or directly from one of our team. We will then make every effort to arrange the viewing with you quickly, and at a convenient time.

If the viewing goes well and you would like to move in, here is a step-by-step list of what needs to happen. Don’t worry if it looks complicated: it is very standard for the rental industry, it’s as simple for you as it can be, and we will guide you through each step of the way.

First, you confirm that you would like to take the room / property, and we ask you to confirm the date you’d like to start. If you already know it, you can also tell us the time you would like to arrive.
We will ask you to pay a holding deposit straight away. This is normally £75 per person and reserves the room for you for a week while you do your application. The amount is taken off your rent later. We will refund it in full if we decline your application for any reason, but it is not refunded if you withdraw from the application yourself. If you can’t pay your holding deposit straight away, this is fine, but please understand that we will need to continue to advertise the room and do viewings until we receive it from you.
When it comes to paying your damage deposit, we will give you two options: a refundable damage deposit, (£200 for shared houses and one month’s rent for self-contained, and this will be protected in the government-approved deposit protection scheme, TDS), or alternatively, you can opt for a non-refundable “zero-deposit” option, costing one week’s worth of rent, which is like a one-off insurance fee. When you move out, if there is any damage or rent arrears, this insurance policy will provide 6-weeks’ rent-worth of cover for you. See Reposit.co.uk for more information.
Rent will be payable on the 1^st of every month, so if you want to move in part-way through the month, you will also be asked to pay rent to cover you until the last day of your move-in month. This is payable no less than a week before your move-in date.
We then send you a link to your application form via our referencing partner, Advanced Rent. You can complete this on a computer or your phone. It includes a credit check and affordability check, it collects your employment and current landlord reference information and asks you to upload photo ID, proof of address and proof of funds. If you have a bad credit score, or our affordability calculator shows that you will struggle to pay the rent plus your cost of living with your income, you will be asked to provide a guarantor, which is someone who will sign a contract saying they will pay the rent if you are ever unable to do so. That person will also need to pass a Credit Check and an Affordability check. Finally, if you are not a UK national, we may also ask you to set up a “Right to Rent” profile through Gov.uk.
We will send you your tenancy agreement to sign, using COHO, so you can read and sign it on your phone or computer. (Nearly) everything we do is paperless! If you opted for Reposit instead of a refundable damage deposit, we will also ask you to sign an addendum to your tenancy agreement for your Reposit.
While all this is going on, your room and kitchen cupboard (or whole house if self-contained) will be deep cleaned and for furnished properties, a new mattress protector will be put on your bed. Where necessary, items of furniture or mattresses may be replaced. Carpets may be chemically cleaned or replaced if the last tenant left stains. Any repairs, replacement bathroom silicone or re-painting will be done, so your room will be fresh and clean for you when you arrive.
All the details and documents you need, including your contract, deposit information sheet, How-To-Rent guide, safety certificates for the house, information about setting up your rent payments, confirmation about meeting us at the property on the day, and so on, will be accessible on COHO.
Each of our shared houses has a WhatsApp group for the tenants. If you like, we can add you to the group. This way, you are notified about things like tradespeople visits, deliveries, fire alarm tests and so on, and it provides a useful place for you to report things and socialise with your housemates.
When you move in, we will ask you to sign an inventory where applicable, and a checklist that ensures we cover things in the house, such as what to do if the alarm goes off, house policies, (e.g. locking the front door behind you) and how to use the thermostat! If anything is in need of fixing or replacing, which we missed, you can easily report it to us on COHO and we will have it put right for you, coordinating a visit with the appropriate tradesperson at a time to suit you. We want your home to be perfect, so we try to accommodate every request to make you happy.

If you don’t have access to a computer or you feel uncomfortable doing any of the above on a computer or mobile, this process can all be done using traditional paper and ink. It may take slightly longer but that’s fine, as long as you are happy that everything is in order, then we’re happy too.

We are proud to say that we have never charged any fees for anything except for a small fee for the replacement of lost keys. There are no check-in fees, no admin fees, no contract arrangement fees or reference fees. Similarly, if you extend your contract in the future, there’s no fee for that either. In fact, the contract is just rolling at the end of the term, (it converts from an Assured Shorthold Tenancy (AST) into a Statutory Periodic Tenancy (SPT)). Everything is very transparent.

We really hope you’ll be happy in your new home. Please take a look at some of the testimonials below from some of our lovely tenants. There are plenty more on Google and Facebook. Please let me know if you would like to speak to any of them directly to find out more about their experiences.

Paying your rent

Rent is always payable on the 1st of the month for that month. So rent for November for example, would be payable on or before 1st November, and would cover November. When you make payments, we ask that you put your surname down as the payment reference. Payments should be made by Standing Order, which you will need to set up at the start of your tenancy. Please note we don’t take cash and we also don’t accept weekly payments unless they are paying towards the upcoming month.

Please use the following bank accounts to make payments. Please note these details will be on your tenancy agreement as well, and in some of our larger properties, on the noticeboard.

For Grebe Close and Bellenden Road, please pay “Tom Holliday” at HSBC 40-04-09 / 32190893. Please include your name in the reference.
For Granville Road, Buckley Street, Wild Street, Gladstone Street or Bad Bargain Lane, please pay “TWH Homes Ltd.” at HSBC 40-44-39 / 01732846. Please include your name in the reference.
For all other properties, please pay “TWH2 Ltd.” at HSBC 40-47-31 / 03669165. Please include your name in the reference.

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