Rent a home

We provide a range of rental options so that you can find a home that suits your needs.

Social rent

These homes are significantly cheaper to rent than you’d pay a private landlord, often around 50 percent less than the market rent for the area. Our social rent homes are allocated to people who are nominated to us by local authorities. The first step to renting one of these homes is to register with the housing department for the local authority in the area you’d like to move to. Here’s how to contact your local council.

Many councils use Choice Based Lettings schemes, which allow you to bid for properties that the council advertises. The homes you express an interest in must be suitable for your needs (for example, not be too big or too small).

For properties available or coming soon in Chelmsford, Brentwood, Epping Forest and Uttlesford, visit the HomeOption website and magazine. For properties in other areas of Essex, such as Braintree, Colchester and Maldon, visit the Gateway to Homechoice website. 

If you’re successful in selecting one of our properties advertised through your local council’s scheme, we’ll contact you to talk you through our tenancy application process.

To find out more about how our properties are advertised, allocated and let, including who’s eligible for what, read our Allocations Policy[pdf] 267KB.

Other rental options

Immediately available homes

We manage  a waiting list for some rental properties. These are social rent properties that have been advertised previously by the local authority but had no suitable applicants. These homes are exclusively for people over the age of 60, or over 50 if you receive disability benefit (or Personal Independence Payment). They’re usually close to local amenities, including shops, supermarkets and pharmacies. You can search our immediately available homes by visiting the New home section of our website. You can apply directly to us for these homes by completing the Immediately available homes application[pdf] 2MB.

Intermediate Market Rent (Discounted)

We offer a range of properties under this scheme. Rent is charged up to 80 percent of current market prices (including service charges), so it’s up to 20 percent cheaper than if you’d rented through a private landlord. These homes are available through our New home section of the website. We’ll carry out a full tenant reference check (including your credit rating).

Market rent 

We also offer homes for open market rent. This is when rent is charged in line with current private landlord prices for similar properties in the area. You can search the homes we have available using commercial property websites such as Rightmove. Market rent is easy and simple to arrange, although we’ll carry out a full tenant reference check (including your credit rating).