Due to the nature of the local council internal procedures, housing benefit payments can take several months to be processed. Usually, the Landlord will be given money by the council up front for a deposit and first month's rent. The deposit is paid back to the council at the end of the tenancy and the first month's rent is paid back in installments to the council by the tenant.

After that, you can wait several months to receive any further rent as the council have to assess the tenant as to how much benefit they will receive. To add even further confusion, many councils pay in 4 or 6 weekly installments rather than monthly which can make it difficult to keep track of the rental payments made.

The biggest problem is that the tenant is still responsible for the rent and the council is in no way included in the tenancy agreement. As such, if the council pay benefit to tenant, you then still have to collect money from tenant. As they are DSS, they often spend the money before you get your hands on it (without stereotyping too much, this is from experience). If the council pay the benefit direct to you as Landlord but they have assessed that the tenant still has to pay part by their own means it can become even more tricky because the tenants always seem to think that the council are paying the full rent and don't want to give you anything. All in all it can be very messy.

This is not always the case, and sometimes the DSS tenancies can work fine, but, in my experience there are no plus sides to DSS tenancies which you wouldn't get with normal private tenancies. If you do want to go DSS, I would recommend that you get a reputable Letting Agent (preferably with relationship to local authority) to organise this for you to save hassle.

As far as the actual tenants go, good and bad tenants come in all shapes and sizes and you can never really tell. I have had experience of some top class DSS tenants and some really nightmarish professional business men. You really can never tell.we accept dss in dss london