Your rent is based on the market value of your home when you moved in, but with a discount because we’re a not for profit.
How much discount we can give you depends on a few factors. Things like:
- When your home was built.
- How it was funded originally.
- Government policies at the time.
- Your rent will be approx. 20-35% cheaper than what it would’ve been on the private market.
Because we’re a social business, we collect approx. £22m less in rent per year than a private landlord would for the same homes.
To ask for more details on how we calculated the rent for your home specifically, click here.
You rent covers the cost of your home - this means:
- Day-to-day repairs
- Servicing equipment, doing safety checks and maintenance
- Budgeting for long-term maintenance
- Fair wages for our team*
- Paying back the loans we took out to build your home
- Our top priority and biggest costs are repairs and maintenance
Everyone’s situation is different. We can’t run at a loss, but we’re here to help people.
We look at these things to keep rents as affordable as we can:
- Government guidance– the Government gives housing associations a steer how to set rents. They set formulas for some rents and every year they set a limit on rent increases.
- Below benefits– B3Living also has a policy to make sure our rents don’t go over the amount you claim in housing benefit (this is called the Local Housing Allowance). If the rent comes out higher, we lower it to match the Allowance.
- Service charges cap– you might see a ‘Keeping things affordable’ cap on your service charges. This means your service charges won’t go up by more than £3 per week.*
- We ask you– every year we run a consultation in November to find out what your priorities are and how rent changes might affect you. Please join us next year!
*Note: this cap doesn't apply to utility service charges (heating / electricity).
It sounds odd, but there can be different rents for similar homes on the same estate.
Because we’re a not-for-profit, our homes are discounted compared with the private market. Most new B3Living homes are rented at 80% of the private market price.
But sometimes there are bigger factors that affect how much of a discount we can offer.
You can find out more here.
If you're an Independent living customer, you're service charge will cover things such as:
- Alarms and engagement services
- Housekeeping
- Laundry room
- Trigger pendant
- TV license
Your service charges may cover a wide variety of different services depending where you live. Click here to see a full breakdown.
Your rent is based on the share of your home that we still own.
Your rent is calculated as a % of what that share was worth at the time you bought your home.
Usually this is approx. 2.75%-3%.
Every home is different, so the best place to check is your lease.
Your lease will also explain how much your rent can go up year on year.
Shared ownership is a government scheme. So, we follow their guidelines and rules when setting rents. You can find out more here.
Your rent covers the share of your home that you haven’t bought yet.
It’s likely that we would’ve taken out loans to help build your home.
Your rent helps us to pay these back and cover other costs.
Your mortgage payments are separate to your rents.
Your mortgage will be based on the value of the share you have bought.
This charge covers repairs in communal areas of your block (hallways, entrance doors, etc).
This cost does vary from year to year depending on what we need to fix, but the overall charge is divided evenly across all households in the block.
We will typically go through a consultation process (known as a ‘Section 20 consultation’) before doing any large repairs and maintenance work - find out more about this process here.
Sometimes it isn’t possible to go through a consultation process (for example if the work is urgent) and in those cases any cost to our customers would be capped at £250 per household for each repair.
The charges you receive every April will be estimates. The information above sets out how we calculate each charge, but your estimates will also be based on spending in previous years, forecast spending and other factors (e.g. inflation).
In September, the following year, you'll receive a breakdown of how much was actually spent. For more information on how this process works, click here.
We have a dedicated rents team to support our customers. They can be contacted on 01992 453700 (option 1). Alternately, they can be emailed income@b3living.org.uk
We have our own Customer Community to help us make big, important decisions. If you want more information or how to join, click here.
We're always open to feedback and we're always looking to improve. You can log a complaint or provide feedback by clicking here.
This is a test
a question about your statement or account